A Present Heaven ...

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^^%^(J i!l. lAXLZ^L^in^L^

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Bi Tne Sim adthob.

THE PATIENCE OP HOPE.

TWO FEIENDS.

la Press.

POEMS.

OUR SINGLE WOMEN.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR.

TICKNOR AHD FIELDS, Publishers.

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Present Heaven

JDDRESSED TO A FRIEND

THE AUTHOR OF "THE PATIENCE OF HOPE"

BOSTON

TICKNOR AND FIELDS

I 864

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Coi

I. Introduction

II. The Gospel received Partially

III. The Gospel received Historically .

IV, The Gospel received Prophetically
V, The Gospel received Implicitlv

Notes

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A lIlQLghliess gifl »ilhdrai

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Introduction.

gVERY man that cometh to God,
. darkly as he may feel after, and im-
perfectly as he may find Him, comes
I to Him under the twofold conviction
upon which the Apostle bases the existence of
Faith itself J he must be persuaded "that God
is, and that He is the rewarder of such as dili-
gently seek Him," — a testimony which the
Psalmist confirms even in transposing it, when
he declares, " Verily there is a reward for the
righteous, doubtless there is a God that judgeth
th« earth." Thus all approaches to the Supreme
Being, howsoever warped by error or super-
stition, possess something of the nature of true
religion (re-allegiance), because they testify to
man's belief in a power raised above humanity,
yet stOl cognizant of its actions and influenced
by its dispositions. And while the human spirit
has proved itself unable without supernatural

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2 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

help to " retain God " within it, while it has so
often lost the object of faith, it has ever kept
within it an instinct, witnessing to its capacity
for access to the Divine, and reaching out after
a bond that may place it in an assured mutual
relation with that 10 which it aspires. Natural
religion, and all that goes to make it up, prayer,
propitiatory and deprecatory offerings, a hfe spent
in accordance with what is believed to be the
Divine pleasure, is the witness on man's part to
his desire for reciprocal communion with that,
which, though unseen, he feels to be above,
around, within him. Revealed Religion is God's
acknowledgment of this inward instinct, to which
it restores its true object, and shows how that
object may be alone apprehended.

I, saith Christ Jesus, am the Way. Revela-
tion is the coming forth of the Father to meet
His Son, while He is a great way o£F; it is as the
spirit of God moving upon the darkened surface
of man's heart and intellect, and saying, ** Let
there be light." For no man hath yet by search-
ing found out God ; no wish, no yearning of
the human breast, however mighty, could have
brought down Christ from above ; no effort, no
agony of the human mind could (as some deem)
have raised Him up from the depths of indi-
vidual consciousness. Our God is one that

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A PRESENT HEAVEN, 3

hjdeth Himself. The field of grace is one with
treasure hid within it, a treasure to which grace
itself must guide us, or God, though indeed
He is not far from any one of us, is am.ong
us as One whom we know not. We need a
Divine science ; a knowledge, as regards spirit-
ual things, to be attained only by the aid of an
Appointed Interpreter, Revelation, standing be-
tween the human soul and God, just as natural
science stands between man and nature, enabling
him to understand, to enjoy, yea, to overcome,
that which without this blessed intervention
would have remained a barren mystery.

Through Science, which is but, to speak
plainly, a familiar acquaintance with the things
which immediately surround us, man, in ma-
terial things, has not so much Tnade as found
himself rich ; year after year he goes on enrich-
ing liimself more amply with the * blessings of
Earth's breast, the fair and fruitfiil surfece, and
with the blessings of her womb, the precious
things shut within the ancient mountains, and
hidden within the lasting hills. And yet, while
the aspect of social life is changed, and its com-
forts and resources increased a thousand-fold, all
things, none the less, continue as, in the words
of Scripture, " they have been from the begin-

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4 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

ning " ; no fresh blood has been poored within
our outward system, no new energies, no super-
added forces, are at work within it ; the secret
of the change is a simple one, — whOe Nature
has remained the same, man has learnt to know
her better. Silence has been broken up, and
separation. He has begun to question this mute
companion, dumb, it was supposed, from her
birth, and has received for answer a world,
growing wider and richer with every year that
t6\k.

And when I consider this, and remember that
our Father, unUke the patriarchal one, has more
than one blessing for His children ; when I begin
to compare His two great kingdoms with each
other, and remember that in each we have a
goodly heritage, in each a Friend, the Steward
and Dispenser of God's mysteries, rich in knowl-
edge, in wisdom, and in counsel, I long that we,
and all with whom we are joint possessors and
inheritors, should set ourselves to inquire into
the secrets of grace as diligently as our age is
penetrating into those of nature. These, it is
true, are not to be won, like material acquisitions,
by mere effort and labor, yet it was a wise man
who told us, that " labor was profitable for all
things.^' And in this great spiritual aim, the
work, as the Apostle emphatically expresses it,

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. S

of our salvation, I often think we lose much, by
pursuing it after vague and fancifiil processes of
our own devising, rather than by a diligent ap-
plication of the method provided for us by God
Himself. Like professed treasure-seekers, we
search about under the guidance of some dream
or impulse, instead of seeking for our wealth
where God has placed it, in the natural riches of
the soil. And in this region it is our own feult if
we proceed uncertainly. God has been pleased
to leave us, as it were, to guess at the economy
of His outward Providence ; through patient in-
vestigation, experiment, and inference, we have
to wring out Nature's secrets from her apparently
reluctant grasp, but it is far otherwise with His
revealed economy of grace. Here we are no
longer workers in the dark, who must compare

and

esanunmg every step as we ;

along, and asking of it with anxiety, " Whither
will this conduct us ? "

The very idea of a Revelation precludes, on
the part of those who accept it as such, the
possibility of uncertainty or hesitation ; for if we
believe the Gospel to be indeed from God, we
find all that it demands of us, whether by way
of fact or precept, lying within the compass of
two grand yet simple words, — Acceptance and
Obedience. We must aco^t the Gospel, inas-

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6 A PRESENT HEA VEN.

much as it makes us aware of all that the
Almighty is to us ; we must obey it, inasmuch
as it declares to us all that He would have us to
be to Him.

This seems a very simple, even obvious posi-
tion, but if granted, it leads on to a question of
vital interest. Is the Gospel of Redemption
thus accepted among us, not simply believed as
a feet, but believed in as a power, an efficacy, a
virtue? received not merely as a standard for
doctrine and a rule of conduct, but as tliat which
it declares itself to be, a principle having " hfe
in itself," and the ability to impart the life which
it possesses ? Let us a little consider the Gospel
under what may be termed its sacramental char-
acter, as being the means by which the life that
is in Christ is conveyed within the soul. To
the faithful receiver the outward letter of Scrip-
ture is but the sheath or vehicle of the incor-
ruptible " WoKD," by which, as the Apostle tes-
tifies,* we are born again unto God. To receive
it, tlierefore, simply as a revelation of God's wiE,
a record of His dealings, a book of laws and
statutes and commands, is much the same thing
as if, living in the days when He of whom it
testifies dwelt among us in the flesh, we had
received Him as Moses or Elias, or as one of the
• 1 Peter i. 23.

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A PRESENT HEA VEN. 7

prophets, a Teacher sent from God to declare
unto men His will. The reception which en-
dues " with power to become the sons of God,"
is that which recognizes a higher mission, which
is able to discern that the Gospel of Salvation,
in placing the human soul in union with its
Maker and Eedeemer and Sanctifier, supplies
in this union the spring of action, while it pro-
claims, as did the Law, its appointed rule. What
we need here is a wise simplicity, a childlike
literal spirit, loving and bold enough to take
God at His own word, and to appropriate Him
in all for which that word is our warrant ; but
instead of lifting up our gates, and setting the
doors of our souls more wide that this King of
Glory may come in, instead of expanding to
meet the breadth and fiilness'of the Gospel, we
show a disposition rather to contract it to fit our
own narrow standard. Then,* because we bring
no more vessels to hold it, the oil of Divine
grace is stayed. But we seem in general so
little conscious of this, our imperfect reception
of the truths upon which our salvation rests,
that, even in most deeply deploring our defi-
ciencies towards God, we feil to appreciate their
true origin, and make a subject of regretful
wonder of what a more correct estimate of our
■ St. AngBBtine.

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8 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

revealed relations with the Almighty woald
place in the light of a simple necessity. We
urge this question upon others in the way of
remonstrance, upon ourselves in the way of self-
condemnation ; the preacher asks of his people,
the Christian of his heart, Why does the gen-
eral standard of our practice fall so far below
the mark of our high calling, as set before us
in Scriptiu-e ?

And to this there comes one answer, sorrow-
ful and self-upbraiding, — " We fail because we
do not obey the Gospel" ; while there remains
3 faa- truer, far deeper witness and accusation
written up against us, — that we could see
how plainly ! — " We feil because wo do not
believe it," " I beheved," said the Psalmist,
"and therefore have I spoken"; because we
beheve, and according to tlie measure, strength,
and fulness of our belief, will we, as Christians,
speak and act and live. As "the stream can
ascend no higher than its fountain," so it is in
vain to try to live up to the Gospel until we
(to speak femiliarly) bdieve up to it. And this
brings me to the question I have been so long
anxious to consider. Do we — I speak of those
who are Christians in more than in name and
outward profession -;- so believe it? Do we
even hiow enough of its Divine nature and

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A PRESENT HEA YEN. 9

efficacy to see that each one of the complaints
BO commonly heard among us, whether of pov-
erty, of weakness, of incapacity to serve and
love our Father who is in Heaven, is at the
same time a confession of unhehef in that Gos-
pel in which God has been pleased to make
Himself our own? For in the things which
concern salvation, to believe is to have. Faith
is not only a spiritual insight, but a reahzing
appropriating feculty, through which God, and
with Him, in the words of the Apostle, "all
things, become ours"; for all that God is in
Simself, righteousness and wisdom and strength,
He becomes unto us through Faith. Accepts
ance of tlie Gospel, that is, of the exceeding
great and precious promises through which we
become partakers of the Divine Nature, places
us in direct union with God, — the strength,
fulness, and intimacy of this union is maintained
by faith, and must exist in exact proportion to
its measure ; and thus, in the words of Scrip-
ture, all things become possible to those that
believe, through the power of Him to whom
belief unites them. Yet that we have still
much to learn in this matter is betrayed by
another sentiment, often heard among us under
variously modified forms of expression. "Why,"
it is asked,, "so much anxiety about points of

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10 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

doctrine, when it is the devotion of the heart
and the practice of the life upon which God
has made salvation to depend ? It is these
which constitute the Christian."

" The tree is known by its fruits " ; most
truly so, — but it depends for the maintenance
of those fruits, yea, even for its own existence,
upon its* root in the soil beneath. The Chris-
tian life is judged of (and this with the strictest
propriety) by that part of it which is seen, but
it depends upon the part of it which is unseen
for the hold which it takes and keeps upon
God ; and to look for works, or the blossoming
and expansion of God within tlie life, without
Faith, by means of which the soul is rooted and
grounded in Him, is as little rational, that is, as
httle in accordance with things in their true
relation to each other, as it would be to look
in any simply natural operation for an effect
detached from its producing cause. Faith is

• It Is iiiterB3tJng, by way of illustration, to compare whut
Lord BaooD teUa us of natural growth, " that every vegatabla
swells and throwa out its coiistitaent parts towards the oiroum-
fereuoe, both upwards ami downvinrds, and there is no difference
between the roots and branches, except that the root is buried
in the earth, and the branches are eiposed to the air and sun,"
(ilfinstm Organam, book ii.,J with what Baiter says of progress
in flpirittial life, "I know that OTarj man must grow ss trees do,
donmaardt am! apwardt at once, and that tiie roots increase as the

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A PRESENT HEAVElsr. u

the Law, upon whose actuating energy God
has made tlie life which we have in Him to

; and we can no more detach what we
1 our lives from what we are in our souls,
than we can sepa^te heat or light from their

1 principles, or expect to enjoy either in
! of the conditions in which their
existence is involved. The disciples showed
they were aware of this by that remarkable
answer, when enjoined by their Master to the
practice of forgiveness, " Lord, increase our
feith" ; we might have expected, when a moral
duty difficult to the natural man was in ijues-
tion, the words would have been " increase our
charity " ; but in the conviction that obedience
was only practicable through a strength and
virtue that did not reside in themselves, their
prayer was for an increase of the faculty through
which alone the Divine aid can be made availa-
ble by the soul, and effectual to the supplying
of all its wants. We also confess that all our
sufficiency is of God, that without Him it is
impossible to please Him. I long, therefore,
to see Christians, in a deep realimtion of this
acknowledged dependence, begin to talte up the
Gospel under its true and living aspect, as the
means whereby our Creator has been pleased
to impart, not advice and instruction only, but

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12 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

Himself unto His creatures ; and before we
can do this, we have need to look a little more
closely into what Doddridge calls the God-ward
side of our covenant.

I think we lose much from, beginning, as you
express it in one of your letters, our religion at
the wrong end, concerning ourselves first, and
principally, with the idea of what we are or
ought to be to God, without sufficiently con-
sidering the converse, what He is to us. " Ac-
quaint thyself," saith one of old, "with God,
and be at peace"; and the Apostle, speaking
by the same Spirit, tells of a Knowledge through
which grace and peace are multiplied. Yet how
little carefti! are we to attain to this knowledge,
how little zealous to advance in it, how little,
judging from the modes in which we are accus-
tomed to express ourselves, do we, even in a
speculative sense, know about the work of our
redemption and sane tifi cation, those great things
which God has done for us already, wherein it
becomes us to rejoice !

How few among us, with the beloved Apos-
tle* and his faithful and accepted converts, seem
to be persuaded of ^he love and good-will that
God hath to us, His children, reconciled in
Christ! Even our best books and preachers

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. IS

dwell so little upon the glad tidings * in their
fiilness, that I foel justified in asserting that a
Christian speaking among Christians can scarcely
employ the language which Scripture authorizes
the Redeemed of the Lord to use, or express an
interest in the hopes whicli it has made the
heritage of every sincere believer, without ap-
pearing to set forth some strange thing. If he
should venture to speak of a reconciled Father,
a hving Saviour, an actual Sanctifier, a present
Heaven, and to speak of all these as being his
own, it will be at the risk of being set down by
his hearers as enthusiastic, possibly as presump-
tuous ; and this, because the grounds of his
confidence will be in so far mistaken that he
will be supposed to be resting upon some par-
ticular claim to God's favor as an individual,
instead of simply asserting his title to that its
manifest declaration, in which all his brethren
share. Yet he boasts of no more direct assur-
ance of pardon than that for which Scripture
gives him warrant in the revelation of a Sav-
iour's death ; he asks for no sign or token of
personal acceptance, having in this matter no
other anxiety than to secure his interest in the
already given manifestation of His Father's
love, the Christ, who is, if they will so have it,
both *' His and theirs."

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14 A PRESENT REAVEN.

As Englislimen and Protestants we love our
Bibles, we are zealous for them, if not always
with a zeal according to knowledge, — also jeal-
ous for them, inclined to resent every attempt
to restrict the circulation of Scripture, or to
explain away its peculiarities ; so that I dare
the more strongly take up my protest against
an unauthorized yet generally current version,
passed about among us from lip to lip, without
question or challenge, than which I dare ven-
ture to assert no published version of Scripture,
however mutilated and imperfect, ever fell so
lamentably short of the original. It is in the
very nature of error to be at once vague and
subtle ; to insinuate, and, as it were, incorporate
itself wherever it can find entrance, yet all the
while to assume no tangible form wherein it
may be detected. Therefore I would that it
were possible to arrest, and, so to speak, eon^
dense this pseudo-Gospel ; to bid it stand side
by side with the true one, that we may see
what a shrunken, diminished tiling it looks,
and learn how far, in fiivor of these cisterns
of our own which can hold no water, we have
departed from those, living fountains, the lively
oracles of God.

We have fallen, as a people, into a low and
limited view of God's inner dispensation of

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 15

grace, akin, little as we may ourselves snspect
it, to the Rationalistic interpretation of His
outward polity. God's Word in the one case,
as God's work in the other, is toned down and
diluted until few of its distinctive and essential
features remain. There is a practical as well as
a speculative unbelief, and it is this which we
have suffered to creep over us. In ordinary
society — I speak boldly, and yet I hope with-
out ofFence — there are few who deny the Gos-
pel to be true, perhaps fewer stiil who believe it
to be efficient. To explain myself further, —
we confess the Gospel to be from God, we give
in our adhesion to the facts that it records, but
when we come to the effectual working of this
Gospel, to tlie actual living consequences of
those recorded fects, there is an evident stop-
ping short, a " limiting " of God akin to that
of the Israelites,* and arising from the self-samo
source, a dulness and slowness of heart to be-
lieve tlie great things which He has done for
our souls, and is even now doing in them. And
while I am writing these words, slowness of
heart, I am reminded that it may be advisable to
point out the distinction between what I am
now contending for, the simple recognition of
Gospel truth, and its spiritual reception, which

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16 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

is in itself salvation. This last claims the con-
sent of the heart as well as of the intellect, and,
like all things born, brought up, and noOrished *
there, it does not develop its full strength and
perfection in a moment ; we may follow our
Lord for years, and find, as the disciples did,
that He has still " many things " left to tell us,
for these things of God are notf taken and
shown to us by Him who has received that
office, all at once ; yea, even in the end we
shall discover that to understand this Gospel in
its breadth and depth and height and fulness,
is at the same time to appreciate that which
the Apostle tells ns passes our present knowl-
edge, — the Love which ascended up on high
and brought down this gift for us men that the
Lord our God mighf dwell among us. To see
God as He is, is the satisfying portion of the
blessed in heaven, and this, to knov^ Sim as He
is, is the privilege of the faithful upon earth, —
one to be attained only through that " unction
from the Holy One by which we understand all
things," — a Divine intuition, imparted in most
cases slowly, and in all, I think, gradually.

Therefore you will perceive tliat what I am
now saying to myself and others, is not so much
"let us know these tilings," as "let us leam

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. n

tftem." If -we would be " taught of God," let
us place ourselves under the tutelage He has
appointed. The Spirit speaks unto us by the
Word ; faith comes by hearing. It is precisely
this hearing, which, according to what I shall
venture to call a common-sense view of our
religion, I now claim for the Gospel. I demand
for it, as I might do in behalf of any merely
natural system, that it should be allowed to
speak for itself, and accepted (if accepted at ail)
as that which it is self-declared to be. All that
I would say is this, if God has spoken to man, it
must be to some clear and evident purpose, and
in a way to render that purpose availing. His
speaking must be, not in word only, but in
power. Let us see, then, that we turn not in
any wise away from Him that speaketh. If this
message be indeed from our Father, our part as
wise and obedient children is a simple one, — to
believe what He says, to take what He gives, —
simple, but who shall say that it is easyl Hard,
rather, through its very simplicity, to man's
erring spirit, prompt ever to limit, to transfer,
and modify the plainest statement of Scripture,
eager to behold, eager even to endure, some
great thing, solicitous to ask. What shall we
do to work the work's of God? forgetful of
that full and final answer, This is the work

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18 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath
sent.

Yet except we become as little children, we
shall in no case enter the Kingdom of Heaven,
and it is in a spirit emulous of that which in
childhood receives so much, because it receives so
literally, that I would fain approach some of the
traditions most generally received among us,
and compare them with that Gospel of everlast-
ing Truth which, in such measure as they obtain
ground, they go fer to render of none effect.

But before I quit this introductory view of my
subject, a sense of its unspeakable importance
impels me to linger yet awhile upon the thresh-
old, and to repeat my intimate conviction that
we shall find, so we do but pierce deep enough,
that inward decay and outward disorder — all
things which, whether in the heart or in the
community, spring up to trouble and defile —
hold by one common root, — Unbelief in God's
Word and in His Work. There is a breaking in
and a going out among us, only to be remedied
by our taking up our true position, — that of a
people who have the Lord for their God ; and
to this end we must, in the words of the hun-
dredth Psalm, be sure that the Lord Ha is God,
and be or make ourselves equally sure that
we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep

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A PBESENT HEAVEN. 19

of His band. We must, now that the Patri-
arch's dream has become the Christian's reality,
set our feet firmly upon this the lowest round
of the golden ladder that reaches even unto
Heaven. We must take the first step, eikst.
There is a significance in the very placing of
these clauses of the petition our Lord left us,
" Thy kingdom come ; Thy. will be done."
God's kingdom must be established within the
soul before His Will can be fiilfiOed in the life ;
and it is from our imperfect realization of this
truth that so many are weak and sickly among
us, and so many sleep the sleep of Formalism,
that brother of spiritual Death, from which it is
scarcely to be distinguished.' We mourn over a
Christianity as far degenerated from its primi-
tive Type, " the tree planted by the rivers of
waters," as if it had been (as in Chinese gar-
dening) dwarfed and dwindled of set purpose,
without seeming aware of the presence of the
cold underlying subsoil through which this result
has been effected. Yet to lament over defi-
ciency and decay is at the same time to ac-
knowledge that such is in great part voluntary ;
it is to confess that we have cut ourselves off
from Him, the source and spring of life and
fulness, who has provided for the abundant*
watering of His garden.

• Eoclus. XXiT. SI.

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20 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

God, in revealing Himself to us in His Son,
in communicating Himself to us through His
Spirit, has placed us in a wide and wealthy
place ; in this land there is no straituess, neither
Bcarceness ; here we may eat bread and drink
water to the ftill,'and find honey even in the
stony rock of tribulation. Why are we then a
feeble people, — feeble though numerous? ready
to exclaim, when we read of those who have
gone before us in God's iaith and fear, " There
were giants in the land in th(«e days " ; instead
of asking why those days should in any respect
be different from these present ones, when God,
now as then the Strength of His people, remains
the same and changes not. If He has in any
degree ceased to work mighty works in and for
us, must not this cessation arise from that which
of old restrained Him ? Because of unbelief,
" He did not there many mighty works ".; nay,
one Gospel, going further, emphatically declares
that He could not, " because of unbelief." And
if the arm of the Lord be not more openly
revealed among us, may it not be because His
Report, God's own report of His own dealings,
has not been beheved ? Instead of lamenting
our degeneracy fi'om God's saints and chosen
ones under either Covenant, let us rather ex-
amine ourselves to see whether we are really in

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 21

that Faith which was once delivered to tliem,
and through which tiiuy, out of weakness being
made strong, " obtained promises," and wrought
the marveJs recorded of them. These were
men of like passions and infirmities with our-
selves, only differing from us according to the
measure and proportion of their faith. They
lived under no clearer dispensation, they en-
joyed no fiiller privileges, than are and must
remain our own, so long as that Word endures,
" Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world " ; and there is, therefore, no need,
whatever we of ourselves may choose to im-
agine, that we should come behind them in any
spiritual grace or gift. To do the first Works,'
we have but to return to the first Love, we have
but to seek the first Faith ; and to this end we
must lay to our souls this counsel given by the
Spirit to a Church that, declining In belief;,
had declined in strength and energy, " Re-
member, therefore, how thou hast received and'
heard."

The Covenant, lihe the commandment, is
"exceeding broad"; close and intimate, wide
and reaching even unto Heaven, are the rela-
tions in which it binds man with his Maker
and Redeemer, yet it enters not into man's un-
renewed heart to receive the things which God

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22 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

hath prepared for tJiem that love Him. So that
believers have need to say with Achsa, " Thou
hast given me a south land, give me also springs
of water." God is not the author of confusion,
yet over how many of our thoughts about
Him — alike over our ideas of what He is to us,
and what He would have us be to Him — does
confusion stOl reign I Viewing the Gospel un-
der its perceptive aspect, our popular theory
appears to set the character, which it is its object
to mould, before us, just as a work of confess-
edly unapproachable excellence is placed before
a youthfiii artist. It is a magnificent outline,
an admirable ideal, which our Master has set
before us to contemplate, but the excellence of
which He never expects us to attain. This,
indeed, is an acknowledged impossibility; we
must do as well as we can, but need not even
aim at a close resemblance. So much for our
work ; in that which we are to be towards God,
He does not, it seems, mean us to be that which
He tells us to be. And even thus with our Faith ;
in that which God is to us, we are not to ex-
pect Him to be that which He has promised to be.
We are to believe in the Promise, God's Word,
otherwise we shall not be Christians ; but we
are not to look for its performance, the Work
that He doeth upon earth, or we shall be en-

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 23

thusiasts, expecting what we shall never meet
with. What does this mean? Even that we
thinli our God to be altogether such a one as we
are ourselves, — asking for what He does not
expect to receive, promising what He does not
intend to bestow ; yet

Thoa madesl there, no superfioial offer."
The reality of what God has done for ua
while we were yet unreconciled may surely be
our warrant for the reality of what He will do
for us now that reconciliation has been effected.
The love that was manifested in Him that died
for our sins, is exerted in Him that even now
liveth for our justification. Christ is the same,
whether His love be shown in dying for us or
in living for us ; it is but one Spirit under a
different administration. " Reach hither," then,
He may still say to many a cold and doubting
Disciple, " thy finger, and behold my hands ;
and reach hither thy hand, and tlirust it into my
side ; and be not feithless, but believing."

The Christian name and profession is, to a
mere professor, something which he carries about
witt him, because he does not know what else
to make of it. Perhaps at some inture time he
means to make good these title-deeds, to claim
the citizenship they confer ; at any rate, they

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24 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

may lie beside him dormant. He leaves them
alone for .the present. But there is many a
sincere Cliristian among us whose position is fat
more trying and inconsistent, for to him this
Holy Name and Profession is not a change of
goodly raiment, laid by because unsuitej^ to his
actual wear: he is bidden to the wedding; he
is called to the battle ; he knows that garments
are provided for the giests, armor for the
soldiers ; yet n th tl ere is less satisfaction
than might lave bee e\iected. He does not
move about n his ne v j parel with ease and
freedom ; he isks ! selt if it was made for
Mm; he kno vs tl t h d es not fill his ai-mor ;
he will not let go his sword, but he does not
wield it freely e en h wealth embarrasses
him ; for while he is haunted by an uneasy
consciousness of its responsibilities, he is little
soothed by the actual reality of its enjoyment.
It is hard to discover what degree of value
Christians attach to those general privileges of
their position which the Apostles place before us
in so broad and diffused a light. What is it
that we understand by being " in Christ " ? and
in how much are we the gainers by being bom
into a world which He died to redeem, and
bemg baptized into a Church which He lives to
sanctify ? What precise beneiit do we expect to

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 25

receive from the ordinances* which God has
appointed for us to walk in ? What advantage,
in short, ja there in being a Christian ? Is our
Lord to be among us only as a mighty man that
cannot save? I sometimes suspect that much
of our ^ebleness of spirit may be traced to a
secret reservation of the heart. We are not
minded to serve God with our whole hearts,

aud brinsiug them into & devout recollection of Hia presenoe.
This benefit, which meditation wonld equally confer, is nndoubt-
edly one of the indirect advantagea of prayer; but to place it as
the prominent ona is to fall far short of the Scriptural idea of
that communion, through which we make our requests knomti
to the God who t«ll3 that He will both hear and help those who
faitlifully call upon HIni, — the God whom the Psalmist thus ad-
dresses: " O thou that kearest prayer." To beliere in prayer ia,
in St. Jolm's words, to have a confidence that, if wa aslc anything
according to His will, He haarath us,— a confidence which cannot
extend its fulness to our petitions for such blessings as are mere-
ly temporal; for in these prayers, sanctioned as tliey are by our
Haaranly Father, we cannot be tare that the things we ask for
are according to His will, which, in the disposition of earthly af-
fairs, lie has not made known to us; but we may rest in this con-
fidence most fully in our requests for spiritual blessings, for oo
these points God's will has been revealed; and we know that, in
seeking and oove^ng all snoh things, we are only asking for what
He wishes to give os, seeking, not tofiace our own pleasure, but to
do His. " And this is the Will of God, even your sanctificalion."

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26 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

and therefore dare not look to Him to bless and
help us in our whole lives. "We seem to look
upon His promises as things reserved either for
extraordinary Cliristians, or for ordinary ones,
perhaps, upon extraordinary occasions, — for sea-
sons of imminent distress and difBcuIty, — those
great water-floods in which we all, as if in-
stinctively, tnm to God as to a place to flee
unto. Yet show me the Christian who believes
in and lives by every word which comes out of
the mouth of God, who expects to be answered
in his prayers, to be aided in Iiis deeds, to be
strengthened in his conflicts, by the Saviour in
whom his person is accepted ; who, in the sim-
plest affair of every-day life, does God's bidding,
because in His Word He has so commanded
it, and expects His help, because in the same
Word He has promised it ; and I will show you
one, like St. Stephen, fiill of faith and of
power, — a Christian man or woman, who, hi
Christ, is and has all things.

We have been told by the greatest of practical -
thinkers, that " it is impossible to advance surely
in any course, where the goal is not properly
fixed." Until we set a definite, and, I may also
add, an attainable object before us, as the end
to which our endeavors are directed, there can
be no steady, satisfactorj' progress ; we are but

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 27

spending our strength in vain, and drawing our
bow at a venture. Now, I think, in our re-
ligious course we should employ all the appointed
means of grace more steadily, if we set their end
more clearly before us ; if we were fully per-
suaded as to the object we are looking for, living
for, — if we knew exactly what we expected the
Gospel to do for us.

We expect it, of course, to save us; but
when, — in this world or in the future one? to
save us, but from what, — our sins, or only
from the punishment denounced against them ?
What is it that we mean by tliis word, so often
upon our lips. Salvation ? Does it comprehend
all that can make either this world or tiie next
one desirable, in the restoration to God's fevor,
and the recovery of our lost birthright of happi-
ness m Him ; or is our idea ot jt restricted to
that " escaping from Hell and going to Heaven,"
to which it lias been ao trulj f,aid * the mere
ordinary notion of it is limited ^ I will not
dwell upon the low and servile character with
which tlioughts such as these invesf; an estate
whose essential attribute is liberty; I will but
ask the followers of Him whose name was
called Jesus, that He might save His people
from their iniquities, if tiiey hate sin because

• Wesley.

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28 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

their God hates it, or only because He pnnishes
it ? Is it from tlie accursed thing itself, or only
from the consequences of its being found upon
them, that they pray and strive to be delivered ?
I win not dwell upon the unworthiness of such
views. I would only point out their insuffi-
ciency. It will go hard with us in the Battle
that is sore against us, if we are to find our foes
in the present, and only to look for our friends
in the future. The DevQ occupies a visible
kingdom, the "World holds an open market, the
flesh wages an ever-present warfere ; and is not
the Salvation which cometh from the Lord that
which shall, yea, which doth, deliver us from all
of these, a real work, a present work, a con-
scious work, a fer more complete and glorious
work, than hands which hang down are able to
embrace, and eyes looking two ways are able to
behold ? Does not God's Covenant, when read
by its own light, disclose itself as a Covenant,
even in this present time, of life and peace ?
If any of us have not yet found it to be so, it
is because in this great matter we have yet
much to learn of God, both in His Word and
in His Work. To the Law, saith the Prophet,
and to the Testimony. If they speak not ac-
cording to this word, if the personal experience
of believers does not agree with the outward

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A PRESENT EEA YEN. 29

revelation they live under, it is because they
liave no Hglit in them.

We have been considering Religion as a Di-
vine science ; it is not hke the earthly ones in
this, that tliere is no royal road into its myste-
ries : none may penetrate into these who have
not placed themselves under devout and diligent
subjection to its laws, — but will not the high-
way of simple obedience, in which our King
Himself was content to travel, lead us on step
by step, until we enter into the possession of
secrets which make all -outward requirements
easy? " Mysteries are revealed unto the meek."
Is there not such a thing as the gradual growth
of. an affection, which, by placing the heart's
deliberate desire and preference and choice in
God, induces a conformity to His will in all
things, and makes His every command to be
obeyed, not from the pressure of an enforced
law, but through the unfolding of an inward
principle ? Is there not a state in which those
who are in Christ attain to that realization of
their privileges which St. Paul desired for hia
Galatian converts, those httle children for whom,
although they were already born unto God, he
travailed in birth again, until the Son, of whose
Spirit they had received, was " formed in them,"
■ — until the mind which was in them was also

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80 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

the mind whicli was in Christ Jesus, — until
they were complete in Him, in attainments as
well as ill privileges?

We are told that God loveth a cheerful giver:
it is His own blessed characteristic to give boun-
tifiilly, upbraiding not ; may we not, therefore,
believe that He ,13 favorable to tlie free and
willing receiver of His goodness ? Yet, as the
Israelites were slow to enter upon the Promised
Land, 50 are we slow to enter upon the Pup-
chaaed one ; we do not " eat the good " of tlie
land which has been bestowed upon us in Christ,
and through an evU, if unsuspected, heart of
unbehef, a secret distrust in God's loving-kind-
ness, we fall short, as they did, of the rest
which even here He has provided for His peo-
ple, — a rest, for the want of which no Pisgah
view can altogether console us. Too many
among us are like the spies,* we confess that
it is a good land, but exaggerate the difficulties
of attaining it ; its old dwellers (the deeply-
seated infirmities of the flesh) seem too strong
to be overcome : but as Caleb and Joshua said,
and for this were so singularly blessed by God,
" Let us go up at <mce and possess it, for wo are
well able to overcome it ; the Lord is with us."
How long, asks Joshua, are ye slack to possesg

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 31

the land which the Lord hath given 70U ? In
these very words may Faith now urge, admon-
ish, and encourage us to enter upon fiir richer
blessings, far ampler privileges, — even those
laid up for us in Christ. And if we, conscious
of our inherent feebleness, should ask, " By
whom shall Jacob go up, for he is but small ? "
we have our answer given us, —

"Not by Might nor by Power, but by my
Spirit, said the Lord."

"I will Iherafore look to the Lord, idio hideth his feoo
From the honse of Jacob ; yel mil liooklo Sim ;
Shoold not a people sesfc their Gi>d,
Should they leeb inilead 0/ Ihe living lo the Deadt
Unto the oommajid and unto the testimony let them seek.
If thej will not speak aooordinglo this word,
In which there is no obscurity,

Every one of them shall pass through the land diatreaaad and
famished."

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II.

THE GOSPEL RECEIVED PARTIALLY.

?| N assnming unbelief to be the ground-
work of practjcai disobedience, I do
not mean to ignore th« presence and
the power of those other opposing
forces, — the enmity of the natural will, the
attractions of the outward world, to which the
transgression of God's law is so often attributed
by the sacred ■writers ; I would only point out
that these are but secondary causes, merely
symptomatic in their fiature, and witnessing to
that which lies beneath them all, " a departing
from the hving God," to which all these other
departures may be traced back. Over the soul
which believes in God the attractive hold of
outward sense is loosened, as in the soul which
through belief has received Him within itself

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A PitESEyr HEAVEN. 93

the re-iistiiice of inward enmity js o\eicome
" The lie^nniiiE; of Faith -iaith the Apocry
pha yet herein a tiue Scripture is the cleav
m^ unto God * and it n only through fiilnre
in this steadfast cleaving that the toes who
from without or withm war against the soul
are enabled to prevad igimat it w tl Jut tlie
footing which unbelief gives they who hite ns,
though they may mieed assault us aud iffiict
can ne\er become lordi over u"; In the soul
which Faith has rooted and established m God,
the enemy, asks as vainly as did Archimedes of
this earthly globe, for " a point" wherefrom to
remove it from its steadfastness ; so long as it
believes, it remains, with Him unto whom be-
lief unites it, "among the things which cannot
be shaken," — fixed, like the limpet, upon the
Rock of Ages.

There is an attractive power of the world, a
seductive weakness of the flesh, a deep-seated
malignity of the Devil, working through each of
these to our ruin. The world has something to
show, the flesh something to crave, the Devil
something to give, and more to promise ; these
are all strong men armed, having mouths speak-
ing, asking, boasting great things, and to all of
these, their allurements, solicitations, and temp-

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84 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

tations, the coming in of Him who is stronger
than they has but one thing to oppose, a weapon,
angle, yet mighty and effectual to the pulling
down of all their strongholds, — Faith, intimate,
adhesive, and reliant in an ever-living and ever-
present God. Baal's prophets are and have
always been many, but this one prophet and
witness of the Lord, even though, like Elijah,
it remain alone, is strong enough to witlistand
and to overcome them all ; for tliis is the Vic-
tory which overcometh the World, the world
of sense without, the world of sin within us,
even our Faith in Him who hath overcome all
things for and in His people. The world is so
much to us, only because God is so little ; let
Faith but once restore the soul to its true centre,
so that, looking at Divine realities from a just
medium, it may see them in tlieir true and
unspeakable importance, and the power of out-
ward things is weakened, and their overween-
ing charm dissolved, — the enchanter's wand is
broken, and his spell read backward.

We have all, I think, felt it to be thus with
us in momenta of peculiar emergency, when
some one overwhelming idea, whether it might
be of God, of judgment, or of eternity, with its
accompanying pressure of self-conscious moral
responsibility, has been flashed out upon the

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i PRESENT HEAVEN. 35

soul in awful distinctness, as we sometimes see
objects thrown into ghastly relief from the very-
blackness of the thunder-cloud behind them : at
such moments the things we have most prized
and clung to seem so insiignificant that we can
only confess and wonder at the delusion through
which they have ever apjieared of value. That
impressions of this intense nature should be
abiding would neither accord with the nature
of true Faith, nor witli the performance of the
work which God has given it to do. Yet to
have been their subject even for a momept is to
be convinced that where these awful, and as yet
unseen, realities are felt and appreciated in their
true prominence, and realized in their actual
relation to ourselves, all meaner things will smk
into a lower position. The shadow will flee
before the Substance, and it is because* we
have not, through feith, laid hold upon this
substance, — because we allow the visible too
much to obscure and exclude tlie real, that
inward. corruption retains its strength, and out-
ward temptation acquires its power.

Let us consider tliis a little further. Sin, or
disobedience towards God, is only unbelief in
an outward and visible form ; it is the practical
denial of God's existence, the virtual disowning

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36 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

of His authority ; the saying in our Hves what
we have already said in our hearts, either that
*' there is no God," or that, if there be indeed
such an One, " we will not have Him to reign
over us." To enter into tliis more fully, we
need hut to consider how the lives of us all are
moulded and fashioned from within ; to mark
how our conduct, even in the most ordinary-
affairs of daily life, is but the expression of our
inner sentiment, an impress corresponding in
every hne with the stamp which opinion and
feeling have set upon it. Of the least thought-
ful and reflective man among us, we may say,
" that even as he thinketh in his heart, so is
he." His life will be, however unconsciously to
himself, the result and manifestation of certain
principles, be these good or bad or indifferent ;
and even those who, according to the common
saying, have "no principle," who are without
any fixed rule or settled basis for action, will
be found to be guided by opinions, however
vague, and to be under the influence of senti-
ments, however fluctuating. We are accustomed
to smile at the man over whom abstract thought
has gained such an ascendency as to make the
things (however purely intellectual) with which
his mind is daily conversant appear to him in
ihe light of tangible realities, yet we are all of

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A PEE SENT HEAVEN. 37

ns, without suspecting it, as much under tlie
Empire of Ideas as he is : it is what we think
atout things, what we feel about them, what, in
short, thet/ are to us, that gives them their true
significance. Even in the case of whatever
may be most palpable and material, it is not
the mere beholding of it with our eyes, or being
made conscious of its presence by any other of
the senses, that makes it real to us ; until the
spirit discerns, grasps, and appropriates unto
itself the substance, until the Inner and the
Outward meet and kiss each other, " seeing we
do not perceive, and hearing we do not under-
stand." What, for instance, is music to those
who, in familiar parlance, do not care about it ?
They hear it, bat it tells them nothing ; it has
no message to deliver, no revelation to impart.
What is the most magnificent scenery the world
can offer to the man or woman who, placed in
the midst of it, is thinking of something else,
whether that " something else " may be the
mightiest or the most trivia! affair with which
human thought can be occupied ? Indeed, in
BO much do all mortal affairs, firom the great-
est to " the meanest thing of every day," bear
witness to the power of the unseen over the
visible, that every aim and aspiration that the
human heart can frame is but an unconscious

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38 ^ PRESENT HEAVEN.

confession that Man, according to the degree in
which the conditions of his Being are raised
above those of mere animal existence, does not
live by bread alone ; his life is set between, the
spiritual and the material, and the outward
object can only nourish and delight him in
proportion to its correspondence with the inner
need.

The very mutability of human wishes, the
vanity to which Man is subject, is a proof, if
but a melancholy one, of the dignity of his
nature, and indicates the immeasurable distance
by which he is removed from the inferior races,
which (each one after his kind) love, seek, and
are contented with the objects adapted to their
simple requirements, without versatility or sa-
tiety. Instinct is an unerring, unvarying guide :
to have at one time observed an animal's habits
is to know what wili at all times make it happy ;
but it is more hard to search into and satisfy
what an old Divine has called the covetous, rest-
less, insatiable heart of man ; and this because
all men, no less than the just one, live by
Faith, — have all a spiritual element of existence,
have all an ideal standard, be it lowly or lofty,
false or true, with reference to which they are
guided in choice and act. If we would obtain
the key to any man's conduct, we must make

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A pheseih' hea ven. 39

ourselves acquainted with his Creed, — we must
find out what it is he beheves in, if we would
learn what it is he lives for, and in, and hy.
Until we have gained the secret of this corre-
spondency, our lives are, as regards each other,
writ in cipher. Could we but look at outward
things from one common stand-point, all would
be plain and le^ble, and it is our inability to do
this which makes us such riddles and contradic-
tions to each other ; for even those who most
love the world do not love the same world :
they who are serving -the same master serve
him under such different aspects that their aims
are oftentimes as little intelligible to each other
as tliey are to him who, bent upon a higher ob-
ject, cares, comparatively speaking, for none of
the things on which their desires are set. The
ambitious man, tlie covetous one, the pleasure-
seeker, stare at each other in wonder, perhaps
in pity, while the man who has placed his aim
in every-day comfort and respectability gazes at
all three with an inquiring cui bono ? They
who live in the affections cannot understand
bow others should place their happiness in the
exertion of the intellect. The purely domestic
character is at a loss to appreciate the charm
with which, to differently constituted minds,
social or political distinction is invested. Fame

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iO A PRESENT HEAVEN.

is a shadow, gold is dross, pleasure a bnLble,
knowledge vanity and vexation of spirit, to those
who do not care about them ; but to the man to
whom any one of these is an object of preference
and deliberate choice, who lias (whether wisely
or unwLsely) set it before him as his happiness
and final good,' the end to which his life and
energies have become the means, it is as the
breath of his nostrils, an indispensable element
of existence, m short, a reality, be its nature
bad or good, its essence palpable or unseen.
The things which men desire, pursue, and be-
heve in, low and trivial and unworthy as they
may be in themselves, are, to the persons whom
they thus influence " no vain thing, but their
life," — tlie subtle mamspring of thought and
action, hidden and mysterious, and hke thit
which it so closely resembles, the principle of
natural vitalitj, onlj to be discoveied m its
workings.

To understand this — that just according to
the degree in which anything earthly or divine
has become a felt reality, it will make itself a
part of our thoughts and lives — will lead to
the apprehension of a higher Truth, We shall
find ourselves more able to appreciate the cen-
tral position in which the system of revealed
i phiced the feculty tlirough whose

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A S>RESENT HEAVEN. 41

aid alone the invisible things to ivhicli that
system introduces us can be seen in their
absolute awfulness and beauty, or recognized in
their unspeakable relative miportance to our-
selves. Revelation, as regards our spiritual
Being, places every one of us where, as regards
mere natural existence, Creation set down the
first Father of our Race, in a world where all
that surrounds us is new, and only to be appre-
hended through the exercise of Faith, the soul's
single yet sufficing sense, — the spiritual eye,
and ear, and touch, and taste, and discerning, —
the appointed medium between the human soul
and Him who gave it ; without which it can aa
little acquaint itself with God, and with that
inner world wherein with Him it hves, and
moves, and has its being, as it can learn any- ■
thing of His outward world without the aid
and intervention of the bodily senses. Until we
have availed ourselves of this medium, things
that most surely are remain virtually to us as
though they were not. We go on limiting our
notion of the actual to the merely visible until
even our use of the term " spiritual," witness-
ing as it does to realities more tremendous, and,
so to speak, more real m their essence and opera
tion than any which can come under the cogni-
zance of our material senses, carries with it the

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42 A PRESENT SEA YEN.

idea of something shadowy, vague, and impal-
pable. Yet the Heaven we hope for, and the
Hell we dread, are as much realities, though
unseen ones, as the Earth we tread on. The
kingdom of God wirfiin us, though it cometli
not with observation, exists as surely as the
kingdom of this world without us. God him-
self — for the deeper these inquiries go, the
surer do they send us back upon that awful
ground and substance of all things, visible and
invisible — is the seif-existent somrce and spring
of all Reality, though no man hath seen, or can
see Him, at any time ; and He is only to be
beholden as in a glass darkly, in such of His
works as have been seen clearly from the foun-
dation of the world.

Let us think of this a little longer; let us
look, by the light of our every-day experience,
a little more closely into the nature of Belief.
To believe in anything, whether, as in the case
of a truth, we may accept it on the evidence of
soul or reason,* or admit it, being a fact, on the

• It is well to bear in mind thnt Faith, althongh it transcends
Reason, ie none the less, in the first instance, founded npon it
Belief, inasmuch as it is a speciea of manlal choice or preference,
presupposes a certain esercisB of judgraeut; and Fin^lon, I re-
member, illustrates this position by comparing Faith with a guide,
in whom, became we haTe tirst saliafied ourselves with regard to
his chamcter and quallScuhOQa, we place implliit reliance, and
having let our judgment act once for all in resigning \i to him.
Mow where he leads without questiou.

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 43

witness of outward sense, or the testimony of
others, is to receive it with that thorough per-
suasion which will not fail to guide our actions
BO lar as they may be connected with the fact or
truth in question, with a reference to its ac-
knowledged existence. Belief,* whether its ob-
ject is connected with this world or the spiritual
one, which fails to embody itself in action, is
such only in name, and stops short of genuine
conviction. Put a man engaged in business in
possession of tidings immediately affecting the
affair he has in hand, the information he thus
receives will necessarily influence his plan of
action, and will do so in exact proportion to his
confidence in its authenticity, and to the degree
of importance he is.disposed to attach to it, sup-
posing its authenticity to be placed beyond a
doubt. Let us turn this, by way of illustration,
to the one great concern of spiritual life, and we
shall be prepared to meet the remarkable state-
ment of Baxter, who, in his later years, gives,
as the result of a life-long experience among the
souls of men, his firm conviction that the true
cause for the indifference and godlessness of the
great mass of society lies in this, that the careless
and ignorant who compose it do not, in a Sfecv^'
lative sense, believe in God or in a future world.

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44 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

And though our fall acquiescence in this state-
ment is modified by the knowledge that, man
being the inheritor of a perverted will as well as
of a darkened understanding, the intellect may
retain a sort of petriiying hold upon truths by
which the will remains uninSuenced ; though the
course of every-day life shows us that nothing is
more easy even in things of temporal interest than
to see the good, and yet pursue the evil, because
it ia preferred, — still of any man of whom it may
be said " that he careth not for Grod, neither is
God in all his thoughts," it may also, in a cer-
tain sense, be affirmed that he does not believe
in Him. The sou) over which the ideas of God,
and judgment, and eternity exert no' practical
influence, has never received them within itself
as conscious, felt realities ; or a course of action
in correspondence with the awful sense of per-
sonal accountability, which, when so received,
they must inevitably awaken, would not so
much have been induced as compelled. For
acknowledging a Divine revelation to be true,
the fects it unfolds are so confessedly important,
that it would appear hard to accept the facts up-
on which our eternal weal or woe depends, as we
would accept that of the existence of Aurung-
zebe or Charlemagne, — a fact truly, but one
which lies apart and remote from us, without

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A PRESENT HEA VEN. 45

bearing on our present day, or influence upon
our individual destiny, — something which has
been, and is done with forever.

And ferther, let us contrast — excepting the
case of persons whose peculiar studies have
given them a sort of individual interest in such
inquiries — our general reception of any purely
scientific fact, say the discovery of a new planet,
with that which we accord to the establishment
of a point or principle connected with any great
political or social question, or with any of those
subjects of minor yet intimate interest which
bear upon our daily health and comfort, our for-
tunes, or our affections. And let us remember
that it is among these questions, say rather above,
and yet inclusive of them all, that Cliristianity
places itself. The Gospel is no historical monu-
ment, to be studied or left alone at pleasure :
it does not challenge attention on the score of
its curiosity or interest, but claims it on the
ground of its persona! importance to every one
of us. It proclaims itself to be "no vain thing,"
in the sense in which all earthly knowledge,
how excellent and glorious soever, is vanity, but
" the life " of those whom it addresses. When
it teils us of a God, in whose favor is Life, and
makes known to us the way to obtain that favor,
there is no moment, either of our present or

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46 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

futuie ej.isttncp, through which the facts it re-
veals do not send a pulsation : it links itself with
each grain of the sands of time, with each hillow
of the ocean of eternity ; it has to do with all
that the heart and soul of man can conceive And
execute, endure and enjoy, now and forever.
When I think of this Goipcl, and consider how,
like Him of whom it tesitifies, it must of neces-
sity be everything to those to whom it is any-
thing at all, I can perceive a consistency, if a
dreadfiil one, in the case of the multitudes who
altogether reject and ignore it. To the wicked
" who know not God, neither desire tiie knowl-
edge of His ways," God is nothing, neither do
they wish to be anything to Him, The lan-
guage of their hearts, if an unspoken one, "is
none the less, " Depart from us," and their in-
difference to the great means of salvation is
more than accounted for hy their acknowledged
contempt for its end ; but it is so fer otherwise
with them to whom the end — even the end
of all faith, the salvation of their souls — is
precious, and desired above ail good, that I am
at a loss to understand how many among us, so
esteeming the end, seem yet so inadequately to
appreciate and avail ourselves of the means : in
other words, I cannot learn how it is that the
Gospel has become to us (in the sense which I

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A PRESENT HEA VEN. 47

have attached to tlie word Reality) a less real
thing than the world it has to contend with, and
the sin it has to overcome. We have slipped,
as a Christian people, into a position far helow
the one given us by Grod ; and while wo are
ready, as I have said, to accuse ourselves ot
want of diligence in making our callimr and
election sure, is it certain that we have yet, in
tlie words of the Apostle, seen our calling and
attained to a just appreciation of what, on our
part, is the liope of this calling, and what,
on God's part, is the exceeding greatness of
Hit. power wrought in Christ to ua-ward that
believe ?

It has been well said, with regard to objects
of temporal interest, that we must know some-
thing'of a thing before we can feel any curiosity
respecting it ; the very desire for information
on a subject presupposing the presence of an
already awakened spring of interest. Now
when I apply this truth to the highest fact it
can concern, and consider of how many things
hai-ing to do with the deeper and more intimate
-elations of the human soul with God we
" willingly remain ignorant," I cannot but feel
justified in tracing back this ignorance, and the
indifference with which it is twin-born and
twin-existent, to the want of a firm belief in

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48 A PRESENT IIEA VEN.

those great fundamental truths of Revelation
upon which the fabric of man's salvation rests.
We do not know enough of God to make ua
wish to know more, and have yet need of being
rooted and grounded in the first principles of
salvation. For until tliese are more to us than
matters of (so-called) feith, until they are unto
us matters of life, things not merely to be held
by as traditions, but to be lived upon as fe,cta, —
things that we fee! we could not do without, and
to resign our hold upon which would be con-
sciously to let go a portion of our Being, — we
do not truly believe them, we only say that we
do so We do not believe them — I speak now
of \enties which it would shock us, in a dog-
matic sense, to doubt — until thcv have passed
withm our souls as principles and raised up
mthin those souls the powei tnd energy of their
own life In thi.'ie two words the most solemn
which human lips can frame, " I believe," lies a
power to ingrafi the soul that utters them from
its depths, into the very strength and fulness of
every truth of which they are spoken ; and when
I think of this, and recall the great feet whereof
we affirm most constantly that we " believe " it,
I mean the doctrine of the Trinity, I long tliat
we should pass, as regards it, from the confession
of the lips, which is Orthodoxy, to the confession

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 49

of the heart, which is Salvation. For to believe
in One God, the Father of men and spirits, re-
vealed to tis in His Son's life, reconciled to us
through His Son's death, and imparted to us
through the agency of the life-giving Spirit,
is to live in the sense, to rely upon the strength,
and to rejoice in the sweetness of a Divine
relationship. It is to know that we are no
longer strangers and foreigners with our God,
but to feel that, in the bonds of this everlasting
covenant. He is in us, and we are in Him,
brought near by the Son, kept near by the
Spirit, bound togetiicr in a threefold cord which
shall not be quickly broken.

Until we thus leam to realize and draw the full
value from the truths which are most common-
ly, in the sense of speculative absent, believed
among us, we shall be at a loss to understand
how it is that the Apostles, speaking unto us
by the Spirit, continually address us as being
already in * possession of certain assured privi-
leges, and urge ms, on the ground of thatpossea-

• We know that the visible Clinrch of Christ has nevar eihib-
ilfld a community without spot or blemish, and we have histori-
cal evidence for the imperfection of one Church particularly
addressed by St. Panl. Yet all visible members, save those com-
ing nnder the awful exclusion of the "except ye be reprobate,"
are exhorted fo repentance, to pnrity, to diliganM, as the case
may require, not nn the ground of tliuir danger in being without
Christ, but on that of theh- respousibility as being in Hira. '■Knoai

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50 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

don, to go on to make further privileges, gifts,
and promises our own. The Apostles, speaking
to their converts, do not so much admonish them
as would probably be done in our present re-
ligious teaching, upon the ground of responsi-
bility as of capability. They do not so often
say. Because ye know such tilings, ye ought so
and so to act, as, because ye know and have
received, ye can so walk and please God. They
base their arguments, their exhortations, upon
a foregone conclusion, even the life and death
and rising again of our Lord Jesus, and the
benefits wliicb all those who accept Him have

ya not that ye are members of Christ, Tamples of the Holy Glioat,
habitations of God through the Spirit ? "

1 ROTnetiraes "wish we were, as a people, more in the habit of
considering our relfttions with God under what may be called
their covenanted ayiect. Salvation in Christ is not only & gift
from God to man, it U also a bond, a litiag perpeiual lie. placing
ns in assured relations with the FaHier, and enabling ns to take
np that ancient plea, " Have respect unto tlie covenant," with all
the energies of the renewed nature. " The writings of the New
Covenant," — how Hove this, the title by which the Gospel writ-
ings collectively were known to the Primitive ChnrchI Itbrhigs
them before ue as that which they truly are,' the very bonds and
Indentures of onr fellowship in Christ Jestw. Perhaps we have
lost something by the substitution of the word " Testament," and
yet it is hard to choose; for as conveying the idea of a gifl it
bears witness to the freedom of Divine grace, the fulness of Di-
rtne love. Also as belonging to Death, it points to that " neces-
sary " death of the Testiitor upon wliich the everlasting covenant
between God and man was like the temporaiy one, established
" not without blood." Gal. iii. 15.

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 51

received, and are even now receiving thereby.
Tliey do not stop in every sentence, as we are
so apt to do in our daily searchings of heart, to
brealt down tlie wall of partition, and to feel
after the lurking enmity; they* assume that
these are already taken away and abolished in
Christ ; and standing in this Beautiiiil Gate of
the Temple, His full, finished, and perfect sacri-
iice, satisfection, and atonement for the sins of
the whole world, encourage us to advance, by ■
this new and living way, even " within the
Holiest," Considering this deeply, I often
think that, if we felt the Rock under us as
surely as they did, our feet would move more
swiftly on the path of perfection to which they
point, and incline to believe, that the temple of
our hearts and lives is less " fitly framed to-
gether " than it was with thes^ First Builders,
simply because it is not based so firmly upon
the One Foundation ; and yet I say this with
dif&dence, because I have long been persuaded
that there is no feet with which the Gospel ac-
quaints us in which the generality of Christiana
so truly believe, and so sincerely rest their hopes
of acceptance with God, as that of our Saviour's
Atonement, In many facts resting upon a kin-
dred basis of authority, more particularly such

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52 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

as are connected with the nature, office, and
agency of the Third Person of the Blessed Trin-
ity, His continual indwelling with the Faithfiil,
and the fellowship which they in whom He abides
enjoy with the Father and the Son, I dare ven-
ture to assert tliat Christians in general do not
believe ; at least, if we ni^y judge from their
Iiahitual modes of thought and expression, these
great and deeply consolatory realities have taken
no apparent hold upon their hearts and lives.

Yet it would be to charge ourselves falsely to
say, that the great doctrine of the Atonement,
the keystone of salvation, is set at naught by us
builders ; or that we are guilty of counting this
blood of the everlasting covenant an unh(#^ or
unhallowing thing. For while to those who" are
without, the necessary, the meritorious death of
Christ remains the stumbling-block ilnd stone
of offence, the chosen point of attack, ever
openly assaulted, ever secretly undermined, to
those who are within, the Stone thus set at
naught and rejected is still the head of the
comer : it is still the tried stone, the sure foun-
dation, the Rock whereof Faith speaks, " Set
me upon it, for it is higher than I,^* Love's

• " Whan I," saitli onr Lord, " am lifted np from the earth, 1
will draw all men unto Me." The death of Christ is iiere set
forth as that which shall most powerfiilly attract the heart of

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d PRESENT HEAVEN. 53

sure, abiding Pillar of remembrance, whereon
Love's secret is written and graven with a pen
of iron forever. To them who believe, Christ is
precious. Multitudes among us live and die
upon no other hope tlian that sure and certain
one set before us in merits of the Lamb slain
from the foundation of the world ; and all that
I would say is, that even here, where we most
cordially embrace the fact, we do not, for want
of what I will call a holy and courageous Logic,
accept the conclusion to which it directly leads ;
and by thus stopping short, we fail to reach the
breadth, and height, and fulness to which a
single and simple feet like the great one in
question, if implicitly reahzed, would carry us.
If we would have the Gospel bless us wholly,
we must receive it wholly ; we must let our
Lord, the Messenger of the New Covenant,
make full proof of His Ministry among us ;
and remembering that a Divine Sentence is
upon the hps of this Prince, — a Word, whereof
it may be truly said, that " which way soever

niaa to God, aiifl thia beoanee it is tha Btrongeat proof of love.
Love kindles and oafts forth love; " We anml that," says Jolin of
Weasel, " loietie mosl Imable n^ich we ktioie to be ihe most looing "
The love of Chriat has achieved the greatest things, and hence
muBt produce Ihe most powerf\il effects; it has displayed the
greatest davotedneas, and consequently must possesa the atrongeet

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54 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

■we turn, it will prosper," — let us be carefiil to
hearken unto all that, in this great matter, the
Lord our God lias spoken concerniaig us ; let us
take heed to gather up each crumb of this true
Bread, to wring out the \ery fulness of this
Heavenly Vine, crushed for us in the wine-
press of the wrath of God.

For to believe in the Atonement, that is, m
the Father reconciled to us in His Son, and in
Him propitious, is to have taken, in the words
of the Psalmist, God for our hope, and also for
our portion in tlie land of the living ; it is to be
made even now a partaker of tlie fulness of
Hira who filleth all things, and to enter upon
the present fruition of the gifts which He,
having ascended up on high, has received for
us men. In this greatest boon, even that of
the precious blood-shedding of Christ, all lesser
ones are of necessity included, God in giving
us his His Son has given us, with and in Him,
as the Apostle tells us, " all things." To accept
Christ Jesus as tlie Way, is also to receive Him
as the Life ; to rest upon His sacrifice as per-
fect, is also to believe that it is sufficient, not
only for final reconciliation with God, but for
that actual restoration to His fevor, which the
idea of true reconciliation includes, I long that
we should apprehend this essential fact, that

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 55

'* God is ill Christ, reconciling the world unto
Himself" ; because I am convinced that, did we
see tlie Cross more clearly, the light which
streams from it would make many things plain
that are now perplexing ; and because I feel we
have but to weigh thia matter in the balance of
Scripture to become aware of how much we are
the losers, by liml^ig the benefits we receive
by our Lord's meritorious dcatli and passion to
an exemption from the future punishment of
sin. To this, I think, the generally received
estimate of our Saviour's satisfaction is re-
stricted, to a degree which tends to reduce the
crowning Sacrifice to ibe level of those which
went before and prefigured it. Our Lord's
Death, the very substance of these things that
foreshadowed it, is invested with a figurative,
and, so to speak, typical character ; and this
better hope, by the which we draw nigh unto
God, is brought down to a shadow of good
things to come ; if it should be asked whm? we
might answer, in the hour of death, and in the
day of judgment, for it seems as if Christians,
in their sincere, yet partial acceptance of their
Lord's merits, waited until then to plead their
efficacy with God. Yet is tliis Hope set before
us for life as well as for death, not only in the
hour and tlie day of which no man knoweth.

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56 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

but in every hour and day of tJiis our mortal
life, in all time of our tribulation, in all time of
our wealth, from the sorest pang to the meanest
provocation of every day, may the Christian,
having once laid hold upon it, flee unto it for
refuge. The soul which can say with St. Paul,
" It is Christ that died," has obtained with him
a triumphant answer to ev^ doubt within, has
found a stronghold from every difficulty without.
Having obtained, through the one Mediator, a
present access to the Father, it finds, in that
access, the supply of all its deeply-felt wants,
the satisfaction of all its yearnings.

Having entered in by the Door, it is " saved," —

yea, it may go in and out, and find pasture ; for

He who has delivered our souls from death has,

at the same time, delivered our eyes from tears,

and our feet from falling. " Retiyn, then, unto

thy rest, O my soul," may the Christian now

say, "for thy Lord hath dealt bountifully

with thee I He who is become thy

salvation wUl be also thy shield

and thy song, the strength

of thy life, as well

as tliy portion

forever."

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III.

THE GOSPEL RECEIVED HISTORICALLY.
Say not In thine heatl, Who shall dtsgend inio Ihe deep, lo bring iq

9 HE Gospel is a history, inasmuch as
it sets before us God manifested in
the flesh ; a power or Agency, in-
. asmuch as it reveals to us God com-
municated by the Spirit ; and the life-walk and
tnumph of Faith consists in maintaining these
two pomts * in their essential connection, and
thus keeping God — seen under one relation and
felt under the other — "always before it." I
think a certain deadness of the letter has crept
over us, because, not being as a Christian people
sufficiently at home in our own polity and con-
stitution, we do not so fully as in the Primitive
Age appreciate the vital connection which exists
between the great facts which the Gospel re-

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58 -i PRESENT HEAVEN.

cords and the great principles winch, through
those fects, it communicates. We seem to have
in some degree lost what the first builders so
abundantly rejoiced in, a principle of cohesion
between the work done and the work doing;
and thus the events with which the Gospel nar-
rative makes us acquainted, instead of being,
every one of them, "very nigh" to us, bpund
up and interleaved within the volume of our
personal experience, have to be fetched, as we
want them, from the remote distance where they
lie, like the bones in the Valley of prophetic
Vision, dry and sapless, detached from each
other, and from all connection with the life that
we are now living upon earth. When we re-
ceive along with each of these facts the sign
which was given unto Moses, and learn that it
is * I AM which hath sent it unto us, a breath of

• Trae Passion always passes iuto the PreBent; we see fhEs in
preachiog and in oratory; even m narratiye, wlien a speakec
warms, he leaves the dry liistoric manner and appears to desoriba
wliat is at present passing under his eyes. Herder says that the
poverty and simplicity of the Hebrew verb, which has scarcely
mors than one tense, tends to imprint the language with a highly
poetic and prophetic character, because it brings all things within
the present moment Most languages, he says, that are rich in
tenses, liave perfected them through hlstorio writing; but in the
Hebrew record — an inspired poetry, In whioli hlstoiy aud proph-
ecy meet — the want of exactness is not felt, and the very ab-
sence of precision and certainty tends to bring the now into clearer
relief. What one verse in the prophetic writings relates to ns of

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A PSESBNT HEAVEN. 59

life is infused within all that has been formal
and historical: across the statements of the letter,
of which, taken singly and apart, we may have
said that "they are very dry," a spirit passes,
they came together,* and behold, "they live,"
and stand up on then: feet an exceeding great
army, %^ting for and with us in the battle,
which 19 like the- one recorded in Chronicles,
-)Oth behind us and before.

The nominal Christian accepts the facts which
Revelation intp^td, and even recognizes, thoutrh
but in a vague and indeterminate manner, their
bearing and influence upon his spiritual life and
eternal destiny. Ke i^onfesses, in a speculative
sense, that these things cannot be spoken against :
as I have said, he bfelid-zes the Gospel. Tlie
experimental Christian hdi:eves in it. To him,
the events with which, -vrodor either Covenant,
the records of inspiration tictjUMnt him, though
not mere matters of history, ar^j really such in a
deeper and fuller meaning *iJh,ii we are accus-
tomed to attach to tlig expres*.'ion,and he studies
them just (to compare spiritual things with tem-

Past time, tha next predicls of the Future. It is as if the last made
thepresmce of the tlang atrhirins and etenti (, mhiU Iheformtrparl
gives the ipeech the rerfcoMy of pasf time, lu if it were all already
fulfilled. Thus He obbums of time strengthens the expression
both ways.
• Ezekiel Z£xvi). T.

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60 A PRESENT HEA YEN.

poral) in the spirit in which he would investigate
the history of 'the country in which he hves, and
with whose constitution his general well-being is
identified. As the inhabitant of a great and
free country, he cannot but be aware liat, under
a different Past, his present condition and future
prospects would be altogether different. Had
not this battle been fought, this invader repulsed,
this immunity obtained, this charter granted, he
would hold at this moment a less fevorable posi-
tion than that which he now occupies. And
thus are the Constitutions of our Christian
Polity based upon a grand historic Past, from
which the Present draws its rich capabilities, the
Future its blissful certainties ; upon which, as
upon a foundation which cannot be shaken, the
kingdoms of grace and glory have been estab-
lished, and witliout which each of them would
be still, as to earher ages, no more than a dream,
a hope, a possibiHty.

The language of the Apostles is that of men
who, knowing wherein and whereby they stand,
feel and rejoice in all the security of their posi-
tion. To them, the Gospel, as yet written only
in the hfe and death and rising again of their
Lord, is a power, an energy, in the strength of
which, in tlie words of the Prophet Isaiah,* they

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 61

lay hold upon God's strength, and act, and pray,
and prevail. For in each event of our Saviour's
life upon earth — that lively Parable, in which
the Almighty, no longer speaking to His people
by words, has seen fit to act out His good will
and pleasure concerning them — they discern
at once the token, accomplishment, and seal of
some peculiar purpose of God, and as such they
accept, feed upon, and rest in it. We must enter
as deeply as they do into the profound and mys-
terious connection which exists between the
natural and visible life of Christ upon earth, and
the spiritual and hidden life which the faithful
soul enjoys with Him in God, before we can
understand the tenacity with which they festen
upon every fact of our Lord's history, and
lay upon each event and incident of His life a
detaining grasp, that will not let it go until it
has blessed them. We never find them aontem-
plating the mystery of Eedemption as an exhibi-
tion of God's power and mercy, to be gazed into
as by the angels with delighted wonder. This,
they say, hath God done, and for us. They
acknowledge it to be His work, a work wrou<^ht
for and in them, perfect, complete, and lacking
nothing. As all that they desire is to be found
in Christ, " in whom are all things, and by whom
all things consist " (or hold together), we never

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62 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

find them drawing the distinction between Doc-
trine and Practice, which we are so apt to make,
or treating of each apart from tlie other, as if it
■were a matter of separate ohhgation. They
know too well in how much all that we are or
can be, the newness and fulness of our life in
God, is wrapped up ajid involved in a Saviour's
accomplished work, to think of detaching either
principle or precept from the fe,ct from which
each draws its life-blood.

Seeing this truth clearly, that God hath made
Christ unto ws wisdom and righteousness, sancti-
fication and redemption, all their teaching leads
back to Him, in whom, as within a burning
focus, the various manifestations of God's power
and mercy, the glory which He hath in Himself,
the grace which He hath evidenced to us, have
been made to converge. Since all that was
sometime darkness has now become light in the
Lord, in whom it has pleased the Father of men
and spirits that all fulness should dwell, and
through whom, by the Ministration of the Spirit,
He has willed that we should all receive of that
fulness, they are no longer ignorant of God's
feelings towards them, no longer in doubt as to
His purposes. Within this new and living Way
the Creator and His creature have met, been
reconciled, and been united ; the Divine Nature

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 63

has come down to meet the human, the human
nature has been taken up into the Divine.
Therefore, as I have said, the Apostles recognize
a continual parallel between the events of the
life which Christ lived for us, and those of the
life which we live in Him, and find a coun-
terpart for all that He did and suffered in
the natural body which was prepared for Him,
in what is even now being transacted around
and within them in the mystical body, spoken
of as the fulness of Him which filleth all in all.
In all that Christ has wrought for tliem, they
discern at once the earnest and the surety of
what He is to work in them ; and thus, whether
they would inquire concerning the Will or the
Doctrine, their feet find no rest but in growing
to the blessed steps of their Lord's most holy
hfe upon earth.

All that the servants possess is derived from
the Master, upon whose hand their eyes wait
continually. Without Him, and independently
of the Work which He has done, they are
and can do nothing ; yet with Him, and by
favor of what He has accomplished for them,
they can perform all things. Therefore they
take their stand upon this word, — Because.
Because, says St. J-ohn, the Word was made
flesh and dwelt among us, of His fuln^-^a we

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64 A PRESENT HE A VEN.

have all received, and grace for grace. Be-
cause Christ, ill this body of our huiniHation,
has suffered once for sin, St. Paul admonishes
his converts to reckon themselves to be "dead"
unto it ; and because He has taken up the same
body into the life and glory which He had with
the Father from the beginning, he exhorts them
to number themselves among those who, with
their risen Lord, "are alive from the dead."
AJi their carefulness, their zeal, their holy anx-
iety for themselves and others, tends to this one
point, that as the life of God hath been made
manifest to them in Christ Jesus, so may the
life of Jesus be made manifest in their mortal
flesh ; so that He who hath raised up the body
of their Lord may raise up their spirits in the
newness of the life which is in Him. Their
sense of assimilation, of identification with Him,
in whom they live, and war, and triumph, takes
sometimes a strength and intimacy of expres-
sion* which we, self-withdrawn farther from the
centre of light, and warmth, and blessedness,
are almost at a loss to understand. Unto these
faithful ones, not only each word which their

* As when St. Paal, in toly exultation, says, " I am orucifled
with Christ, neyertheleaa I Iitb"; adding, to carry ont the more
fully his anblime meaning, "Yet not!, but Christ livelh in me";
dnd Bpaaks of " always bearing about in the body ths dying" and
the marks "of our Lord Jesus." — 3 Cor. iT, 10; Gal. ri. IT.

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A PRESENT HEA VEN. 65

Lord hath spoken, but everj' deed wliich He
hath wrought, is even as it were bread upon
which they feed, as in a continual Sacrament,
and set before their hearers the food by which
they are themselves nourished, saying, " Take,
and eat. This is the body which was given for
you, — a body of whicli not a bone must be
broken." Of all which their Lord has done
and suffered for them in the flesh, they can
afford to lose nothing ; for each event of His
History, taken and received by Faith in Him, is
unto them an outward and visible Sign, through
the power and efficacy of whrcli a corresponding
inward and spiritual grace is conveyed within
the believing sou!.

Now, to us these fects of our Lord's history,
taken as mere facts, are as real as they were to
the Apostles ; we believe as firmly as they did,
that to reconcile man with his Maker, Christ
Jesus took upon Him our human nature, and as
man and for man, lived, suffered, died, rose,
again, and even now liveth at the right hand of
God, With them we a!so connect these fitcts
with the spiritual interests of humanity, and con-
fess that it was for our sins that He died, for our
justification that He rose again. How comes
it, then, that our faith, as compared with theirs,
has declined into a dry speculative conviction, —

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66 A PRESENT HEA YEN.

the assent of the understanding rather than the
consent of the heart, — binding us in traditionary
adhesion to the doctrines of the Gospel, rather
than rooting us in that effectual belief through
which these very doctrines live, grow, and un-
fold within the soul, as principles to he exerted,
powers to be used, gifts and blessings to bo
enjoyed ? How is it that tlie Gospel, with the
system of Divinely-appointed relations it dis-
closes, has become, as to its practical purpose
and interest, so much less to us than to them ?
Can it be that we imagine our interest in it to
be in any way inferior, and the Christ of whom
it testifies to be in some degree less ours than
theirs ? Such an inference might be very nat-
urally drawn from tlie way in which we are
accustomed to speak of our own position as
contrasted with that of the Apostles, primitive
worthies, and even with that occupied by the
saints under the First Covenant.* Ordinary

of example or of warning, has been written for onr learning i bnt
the msntjon of them is seldom, I think, accompanied by a suf-
ficiently ample reoogiiition of the different position which we,
the children of the regeaeration, occnpy towards Giod, and of
tlie fuller privileges and higher responsibilities intol™d in it.
Our present day is the day whioh the prophets, kings, and right-
Boua men daeirad to ebb, find seeuig but afar off, through faith,
were gl^, — a day whereof the prophecy is fulfilled, that he who

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 67

Christians of the present day cannot be ex-
pected, we say', to feel and act like these emi-
nent persons. Yet wlio that looks into this
matter by the light of Scripture does not see
that to be an ordinary Christian,' a Christian
of the present day, is to possess what the elder
saints desired, to be placed where the Apostles
stood — in Christ — with whom is neither after
nor before, neither beginning of time nor end
of days ? What was enough for the first Chris-
tians will prove sufficient for the last, "to be
found in Him," without whom we can do noth-
ing ; and it is certam (however Vaguely we may
allow ourselves to speak upon the subject) that
the Apostles, who, like us, neither possessed
nor could possess anything out of their Saviour,
were in the enjoyment of no one privilege which
we, who are baptized with them by one Spirit
into one body, | do not at this moment enjoy,
and must continue to enjoy, so long as that body,
on the Spirit's express testimony, " is filled with
the Mness of Him that fiilcth all in all." J

In point, therefore, of access, intimacy, and
union, God has put no difference between us
and them; and yet there is a difference, one

is feeble among God's children reconciled in Christ ehall be aa
David. (Zeoh, lii. 8.)
• NoM F. t 1 Cor. xii. 13. t Eph. i. 22, 2S.

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68 -d PRESENT HEAVEN.

of which we are deeply conscious. If God has
set us where He set them, in heaVenly places in
Christ, we know that we do not stand like them,
where He has placed us, or possess, with them,
what He has given us. Our actual position is
not, like theirs, identical with our recognized one;
and this we feel and deplore keenly, yet none
the less adapt ourselves to an order of things
which we choose to look upon as necessary,
without pausing to ask ourselves a question
which seems to arise very naturally, Is this
Gospel, so little to us, the same as that which
was so much to them ? Have we received it in
its integrity, accepting that which St. Paul was
so zealous to declare, the whole counsel of God
concerning us ? or have we all this time been
unconsciously leaving out some part or parts of
the great system the revealed economy of Grace
discloses ? It behooves us to lend a deep atten-
tion to these questions. Their practical impor-
tance is incalculable, for we know that with God
every means must conduce to its appointed end ;
nothing has been made or designed by Him in
Tain, and though we cannot as yet discern the
whole of His gracious purpose, nor understand
the divinely-constructed machinery by which He
has seen fit to accomphsh it, we know enough
of His doings to be aware, that to work per-

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A PMESENT HEAVEN. 69

fectly it must work togetlier,* and if any one
part is left to rust and stiffen, its inaction will
neeessariJy impede the motion of the rest.

The essential difference between us and the
Apostles — in other words, between historical
and experimental belief — appears to consist in
this, that, in connection with the visible fects of
our Lord's history, they recognize, far more
fully and practically than we do, a great invisi-
ble iact. I mean the presence and the power
of the spiritual agency, the dispenser of the
treasury of heaven, to whom the human soul
must be indebted for all that it can know or
can receive of God, and through whose inward
working a Saviour's outward work is made
effectual, by being applied, appropriated, and
brought home to the individual heart and con-
science.

The Gospel received in the mere letter can
profit us no more than the Law, but will remain,
like it, an external rule, instructing us in many
things, but imparting nothmg ; its facts, received
as mere facta, and held as such within the mind
in suspension, lie there dormant and undevel-

• It belioovfla 09 rightly to divide the trutt, to sat it forth in all
its featores, to view it in all ita bearings, and from avery side j for
every doctrine neglected has a fearful avenging power, and wilL

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70 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

oped. They quicken no pulsation, and exercise
no permeating influence. Though they carry a
principle of life within them, it is one which
cannot germinate of its own accord, or exert its
energy, save with the aid of that Divine aux-
iliary, so often hkened in Scripture to those
elemental influences — the dew, the rain, the
fire, the wind blowing where it listeth — with-
out whose co-operation no natural process can
be accomplished. " It is tlie Spirit that giveth
life." Upon this point Scripture speaks plainly ;
and even natural reason, if duly exercised, will
enable us to understand how it is that St. Paul
declares that no man, except through the Spirit
of God, can either receive or know anything of
those " things of God " * which it is the pecu-
liar office of that Spirit to impart. For knowl-
edge, whether its object be tangible or spiritual,
earthly or Divine, can only reach the seat of
consciousness within us, through a medium an-
swering to the conditions of its peculiar nature.
A natural object must be apprehended by the
aid of the natural senses, an idea must be recog-
nized through the exertion of the intellect, a
spiritual truth attained to through the exercise
of a spiritual fiicnlty. In no other way can
any of these obtain that true recognition which

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A PRESENT HEA VEN. 71

makes tliem really our own. We shall all be
rtady to confess that no exertion of the intel-
lect can realize, no description, however accu-
rate, convey, the true idea of a color, an odor,
a sound, a flavor. To know what tliese things
are, we must have seen, gmelt, heard, and tasted
them ; and as with natural so with spiritual
things. Here, also, we must " taste and see " ;
taste before we see, taste in order to see. Our
very perception must partake of the nature of
experience, as all that wo can gain otherwise is
but vague and conjectural, — a notion about the
thing, not the knowledge of it.

The Apostles speak as men who have learnt
the full force of this distinction ; and we never
find them confounding things natural and spirit-
ual with each other, or expecting to arrive at
the understanding of tlie latter by means of any
natural faculty or intellectual process. They
know that through the seeing eye and the hear-
ing ear man is placed in communication with
the outward world of sense ; they are aware,
that through the conceptions of his heart and
mind he can hold communion with the inner
world of thought and of feeling, — those " things
of a man" which, as St. Paui testifies, each man'
can realize through an exertion of his own self-
consciousness ; but when it is " the things of

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72 A PEESENT HEA 7EN.

God " that are in question, they rely no longer
upon the natural faculties and powers, knowing
that these are only to be searched out by " the
spirit that is in man, and through the inspiration
of the Almighty that giveth understanding."

It is through this unction from the Holy One
that they know all things ; and it is somewhat
remarkable that we never find the Apostles
grounding their confidence upon a privilege to
which we are often disposed to attribute it, — I
mean the fact of their having known our Saviour
in His human person. To those who are con-
scious of possessing their Lord, it is little merely
to have seen Hun ; and with them the external
•iew is so mergi'd in the sense of inward reali-
zation, that St. Paul, in describing the intimacy
and fulness of the life in which all things are
made new, exclaims, "Yea, though we have
know n Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth
know we Him no more." To understand the
bearing of these memorable words, we must
drink so deeply into the spirit in which they are
uttered, as to be able to meet their speaker in
his exphcit statement, that no man can say (in a
saving and effectual sense) " that Jesus is the
-Lord but by the Holy Ghost"; and this, be-
cause any acknowledgment of Him that rests
on merely outward evidence must necessarily

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A PRESENT BEAVEN. 73

fell far short of that good confession, for the
utterance of which St. Peter's Master pro-
nounced him blessed. That, on the Master's
own testimony, was the expression of a deep
inward conviction wrought by God Himself
upon the soul ; and it was not because Christ
had been manifested to St. Peter in the flesh,
but because He had been revealed to him in the
Spirit, that he was able to answer our Lord's
question, " Whom sayest thou that I am ? " * in
the words which drew forth this comment:
" Blessed art tliou, Simon Bar-jona, for flesh
and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but
my Father which is in heaven." Now it ia
evident, upon the warrant of these words, that
the Apostles, to whom we ascribe so many supe-
rior advantages, were exactly in our own posi-
tion in this one respect, that they could know
nothing except they received it from heaven, — ■
could learn nothing truly, even of Him whose
woi-ds they hstened to, and whose steps they
followed in, except they were taught it of God.
Without a spiritual enlightenment, even when
they looked upon their Lord, their eyes were
luiiden that they should not know Him; without
a spiritual approximation, even when they sat
with Him in the house, and walked with Him in

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,74 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

the way, they were not really nigh Him. Their
need was as great as is ours of that inner illu-
mination, that internal contact, without which it
would have availed them little that tliey had
seen with their eyes, and handled with their
hands, of the Word of life ; for all this might
have been, and yet have left them without that
knowledge of a Saviour which is life and
peace, — have left them, too, among the number
of those to whom, after having hved in their
presence, and taught in their streets, He will
none the less one day profess, — "I never knew
you."

For it was not every one who saw oiu- Lord
upon earth that saw, with righteous Simeon, His
salvation. While many thronged and pressed
upon Him in the crowd, few really touched Him ;
and the Scriptures make it evident, that among
the multitudes who witnessed His mighty and
merciful deeds, were many persona " who seeing
did not understand," and remained in a state of
unbelief not to be overcome by any outward
testimony, even that of a miracle. Yet because
they saw his works, and in some cases were
themselves the subjects of them, they must
have believed in them, as matters of fact, and
must also, on the evidence of such fects, have
believed in Him, as a Being endowed with won-

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 75

derfiil and superhuman powers. How then was
it that they did not, at the same time, believe to
the saving of their souls ? The answer to this
will go iar to explain to us how it is that so
many among us believe, and in a certain sense
understand our Bibles, yet, for want of a spir-
itual insight and appropriation, fail, wbiie we
accept the fact, to receive along with it the life-
imparting principle it encloses. What the Word
spoken (whether by word or sign) was to them,
the Word written is to us, and neither can profit,
so long as it is received in the word only. They
had tbe fact, and we have its record ; and either,
to be made effectual to the heart and conscience
of any one of us, requires to be brought home
to that heart and conscience, by the Spirit of
demonstration and of power.

We love our Bibles, and we think that wo
believe them : let us ask ourselves this question,
Can persons believe the Bible who do not be-
lieve what the Bible tells them? In other
words, C<m they believe the Bible who do mt be-
lieve in anyMng elaef For while we rest in
the Bible, to the exclusion of any other testi-
mony, the Bible itself declares most solemnly
in favor of another Witness, to whom it appeals
as an evidence of its own truth ; and if we
believe what the Apostles, speaking through the

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76 A PRESENT IIEA VEN.

Gospel, tell us, we must also accept the authority
to which they refer ua, and to which iJiey were
referred by their Lord : " When the Comforter
is come, whom I will send unto you irom the
father, even the Spirit of truth, which pro-
ceedeth from the Father, He shall testify of me.
For He shall receive of mine, and shall show it
unto you." • Now, if they who had been with
their Master from the beginning, who were
themselves appointed to be His historic wit-
nesses, had yet need of a spiritual Witness,
upon whose evidence and through whose spirit-
ual monitions they were to receive their Lord
more fully, and learn of Him more truly than
they had yet done, how can we afford to dis-
pense with its testimony? If the fects were
not enough for them, how shall the record of
the facts be enough for us ? " It is the Spirit
that beareth Witness " ; and so long as Belief
is based, as might have been with the Apostles,
on the evidence of the senses, or rests, as in
the case of so many among ourselves, upon the
written testimony of others, we are but receiv-
ing the Witness of men, the Witness of God
being greater : " And he that beHeveth hath the
Witness in himself,"

Here, then, we find the point of departure

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 77

between us and the Apostles. Our belief, com-
pared with theirs, is dead, formal, and historical,
becauiSe they have attained to what we too often
miss, — a point of union between the work
done and the work doing. While they rest in
Christ's work, they rejoice in the Spirit's work,
which is unto them the seal of its perfect ac-
complishment in their hearts, — the earnest of
grace, and the promise of glory. To them, the
Word spoken from Heaven has been answered
by the work wrought through its efficacy upon
earth ; they have found all the promises of God
in Christ Yea, and in Him Amen. Nothing
has been declared which has not also been con-
firmed. To the Yea of God — the let it be,
and it was — spoken in our Saviour's accom-
plished work of deliverance, of which, upon the
Cross, He testified that it was finished, the
Amen — So let it be — has been returned from
the faithful soul, bearing witness to the salvation
wrought within it through the power of the
Yea. Therefore, while we are all doubt and
hesitation, not knowing whether or not we may
appropriate this privilege or claim this promise,
the Apostles use the language of men who know
the certainty of the things wherein they have
been instructed. What they have seen and
heard is their guaranty, as the Bible is ours,

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78 A PBESENT HEAVEN.

for the facts upon which their relations w-ith
God are founded ; and when they pass from
these facts to their application to the individual
soul, -we find them no less confident, and this
because they have received not only gifts, but
with, them that which seems, in the case of any
intelligent Being, essential to the true possession
and use of them ; I mean the knowledge that
they are our own. " We have received," says
St. Paul,* " of the Spirit to know the things
which have been freely given us of Grod " ; and
St. John testifies for himself and his converts,t
that " an understanding has been given them
both to know Him that is true, and they tiiat
are in Him that is true."

As He that beareth record is true, so is He
that beareth witness true also ; and having re-
ceived the faithfiil and true Witness, God's
testimony to His own Work, they would as
soon think of doubting that which they had
seen, the fact of our Lord's personal existence,
as of doubting that which they have felt, their
own personal interest in Him ; they would as
soon think of calling their Saviour's merits in
question, as of hesitating with regard to their
own participation in them. That they are in
Hini, is a feet as clearly established as that He
• 1 Cor. ii. la. (1 John v. 20.

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 79

is ; and this confidence has not been brought
about, as we sometimes imagine, both as regards
them and other eminent Christians, by way of
any extraordinary Revelation, but is founded
upon the evidence which, in the case of any
merely natural event, we should esteem at once
the simplest and the surest, — they know that
the Work is wrought for and in them, simply
because they experience its effects ; they feel
that something has been brought about within
their souls which could not have been accom-
plished but by the presence of a power, the
influence of an agency. Being conscious that
it is not with them as it has been, they compare
the affections, tempers, and desires they now
experience with those which had possession of
them while they yet walked in the darkness of
the natural understanding ; they rest, in short,
in a felt and experienced work.

And here I would draw attention to another
deeply interesting fact, and wish to do so the
more particularly, because when a view, how-
ever scriptural, fails to obtain general reception,
it is usual to charge it with being unreal, vision-
ary, tending to no practical issue. It becomes,
therefore, very important for us to observe that
the Apostles, boldly as they speak for themseHes
and the Churches to which they ministered,

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80 A PRESENT HE A YEN.

of conscious possessing, conscious partaking of
Christ, never rest this possession and partaking
upon sensations, impressions, visions, or revda-
tions of tlie Lord (abundantly as in these last
respects tlieyhad whereof to glory), but ground
it upon the turning of the heart to God,* as
evidenced in a renewed affection, a moral reno-
vation, a spiritual change. They know that

" Few Christiana appear to have eniojed anch aboaiiding, even
overwhelming, manifestations of the Divine presence and favor,
as fell to the share of the heavenly-hearted Brainerd. In yonth
he would pass whole days in the wild solltndea of the forest, In a
Btate of eoatasy, in which he was insensible to the flight of time,
to hunger, and every Impression of an outward kind, and during
the whole course of his ardent evangelic life, there were seasons,
not unfreqnent, of which, through the aimndance of the revela^
tions, he might have said, with the Apostle, that whether they
were piissed in the hody, or out of the body, was known not to
him, but God. Tet it is recorded that, " There was no sight of

and a vast multitude with shining garments; no vision of the
book of life opened with his name written in iti no sudden sug-
- gestion of words or promise of Scripture, as then immediately
spoken or sent to him, ao new revelations, or strong snggestions
of secret facia. But the way he was satisfied of hia own good
estate was by feeling within himself the lively actings of a holy
tamper and heavenly disposition, the vigorous esercise of that
divine love which casts out feiir." Also, on the subject of his
missionary labors, he saysi "I look upon it as one of the glories
of this work of grace among the Indians, and a special evidence
of its being from a Divine inflncnce, that there has been till now

tho^ mtional convictions of sin, and solid consolations which
numbers have esperienoed, aad might I have had my deiire, there
hadiiee/i no appearance of ant/lMny vflhls aatvre al oil."

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A present' HEAVEN.

81

they are Christ's by the Spirit which He has
given them, — a Spirit which, being like unto
His own, works in their spirits a holy Ijke-
mindedness with their Lord. Without this,
thej might possess all gifts, and understand all
mysteries, and yet be nothing. St. Paul's ex-
perience works hope, and he knows that this is
a sure and certain hope, a hope that maketh not
ashamed, not because he has been caught up
into the third heaven, and heard in paradise,
unspeakable words not lawful for a man to utter,
but because the love of God is shed abroad in
his heart by the Holy Gfiost.* St. John knows
that he has passed from death unto life, not
because, being in the Spirit, he has seen and
talked with angels and with One greater than
they, but because he loves the brethren.f And
just as in our Lord's outward ministry of Re-
demption, the works that He di9 bore witness
of Him that God had sent Him, so m His inner
ministry of Sanctifi cation do signs and wonders
accompany them that beheve. And, as in the
case of our Saviour's mu-acles, the work of
power bore witness to the presence of power,
so is the presence of grace attested by the work
of grace. In each case an appeal is made#o
something accomplished — e\-ident — to be seen

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82 A PRESENT HEA VEN.

and known of all men. The Spirit as well as
the Word says, " Believe that I am He, for the
very works' sake," for the sake and on the testi-
mony of love, peace, righteousness, and joy in
the Holy Grhost, My works — in their way as
manifest as the works of the flesh which they
displace. " If I do not the works which none
other can do, believe not that God hath sent

It is the peculiar mission of the Holy Spirit
to lead us into the knowledge and certainty of
our happy estate in Christ, — a mission on which
His name of Comforter seems founded. " In
that day," says our Lord, speaking of the com-
ing of Him for whose sake it was expedient
that He himself should leave us, "ye shall know
that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in
you " ; • and I think it is greatly because we do
not strive after the realization of this promise,
and seem, indeed (speaking generally), to have
resigned even the expectation of its fulfilment
within us, that our religion has become a heart-
less, unreal thing, without grasp upon the truths
it professes to embrace,

I know that to speak of things heavenly, just
as we should do of things earthly, on the ground
of simple experience ; to testify to a Saviour's

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 83

love as something which has been felt ; to re-
joice in conscious pardon, conscious renewal,
conscious acceptance in the Beloved, is to trans-
gress the limits of that conventional acceptation
of the Gospel to which Christians are satisfied
to restrict themselves. Such views, it is said,
are likely to lead to error and self-deception.
In short, they are dangerouB, — a word whicJi,
being used for the purpose of dismissing the
subject summarily, is riot accustomed to w£ut
for an answer, or one might be readily found
for it in the feet, that there is no one doctrine
of the Gospel, not even excepting those which
are most essential to salvation, which may not
prove, and has not proved, dangerous, when
forced into undue prominence, by being taken
in isolation from other truths of kindred impor-
tance. Besides, in this ease we are not the
judges. An inquiry raised upon any point upon
which God has been pleased to reveal Himself
in the inspired Word, must not proceed upon
merely prudential grounds. The question is not.
Is this (according to our own notions) a sqfe
view of the subject ? but, Is it the scriptural,
the true one ? Can we deny it without depriv-
ing a large portion of Scripture of its meaning
and coherency, or ignore it without numbering
ourselves among those who handle the Word of

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84 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

God deceitfiiUy, and draw on themselves a real
danger, even tlie judgment pronounced against
those who " diminish aught " from His invio-
lable testimonies? I do not — understand me
well — mean to say, that faith, in order to ba
sincere and .saving, must necessarily reach the
measure of the confidence I have been speaking
of. The song of holy trust and triumph in
God, which none but the redeemed ran learn,
is most truly " a song of degrees " ; and a feith
which eftectuaJly secures participation in the
merits of our Lord may yet come short of the
feith which assures of that participation. 1
would only urge, that this clearer perception
should, upon the testimony of Scripture, be
believed in as a possible attainment, and then
prayed for, striven for, lived for ; for the holy
^ft of assurance is the reward, as an old divine
expresses it, of " exact walking " : it is a treas-
ure impajTted only to those who keep faithfully
the good things committed to their charge. It
is God's usury upon His own money.

We should at least, as you say to me in one
of your letters, exjiect the fiilfilment of our Re-
deemer's so often repeated promise, — the reward
of faith and obedience,* — tiiat He would mani-

■ Our Lord's answer to tha quesUon of Judaa (John niv. 22, 23 ),
t^eti wilh the many other sayings in wliich He makes the abid-

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 83

fest Himself lo His people after another manner
than He does unto the world. Believing this
promise, should we not be urgent after its ac-
complishment, in that spiritual revelation of
Christ, which is to the feithfiil soul the perform-
ance of the things in which it has believed on
the evidence of the outward word ? As no
man knoweth the Father hut the Son, and he
to whom the Son will reveal Him, should we
not pray that the Father may in the Son be
manifested towards us more and more, as noth-
ing short of the sweetness of such a disclosure
can engage our hearts to love and serve Him
with that perfect love which casteth out fear,*

iiig in His love, and id that of the Father, dependent on the keep-
ing of the commandmant, places obedianca before us in a light in
which, I think, we have need to consider It more fully than hag
been yet done. I mean as being a direct means of grace, a way
wherein, as by prayer and the other divinely-appointed ordi-
nances, we approach unto God, and draw out our souls aSttr
Him; as a tree, while it lives by its root, breathes and faeds it-
self through every leaf which the root nouiiahea. Many dlspules
have be^n raised among men as to the difference between faith
and obedience. It ia probable they are idantioal with God, to
whom obadionce, that part of our life in Him which is seen, and
faith, the part which is unaeen, ore alika open aud manifest. It
is evidant that an action parformed or refrained from, with a ref-
erence to the Divine pleasure, !a as eloquent unto God as a prayer
or thanksgiving, and as likely to be ansicered by Him with bless-
ing. For to the eye of love, the deeds and gestures that express
it are as intelligible ss its spoken words, and no less acceptable

» St. Bernard.

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86 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

" which feels not the burden of the day, which
counts not the cost of the labor, which works
not for wages, being itself the most powerful
motive of action " ? And in urging these ques-
tions, I am less occupied with what I believe to
he necessary to the salvation of our souls, than
with what I know to be essential* to their com-
fort. It is upon the Saviour's work, and not
npon the Spirit's witness, that salvation depends.
Yet they are the happiest Christians who, while
they rest in the Day of Redemption, rejoice in
that whereby they are sealed unto it, with Joy
unspealtahlo and full of glory. For without the
witness of the Comforter we can know nothing
of love, and joy, and peace in believing, as
these happy and holy affections depend for their
existence and support upon evidence which it is
His office to impart. Without the security which
this communicates, there can be no sweetness in
love, no foundation for joy, no possibility of

peace

and until we receive this witness we

must live, as so many of us are content to do,
a starved life, joyless, unloving, unassured, as
unworthy of the privileges in which Christianity
places us, as it is of the glorious prospects to
which, on the warrant of those privileges, it
conducts us. " To them that believe, Christ is

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 87

precious." How comes it, tiien, that we are
content to rest the great matter of our personal
interest in Him upon evidence that would not
satisfy us in the case of any temporal f
— fer. less so in that of any earthly a
content to remain without tlie tokens of His
presence, without the marks of His love, with-
out the consciousness of His indwelling and
abiding?* Christ has given Himself for us,

■ To TBturn itgain to thia saying, " If a mau love me, ha will
keep my worda, and mj Falhar wiJl loTe bim j and we will
come unto him, and make our aboda wilh tim," — do they not
attach an unspeakable present reward to faith and obedience, a
prize only to be attained through Uielr joint eseroise, though
Ireedom and acceptance may be won, as by the thief on the cross,
thiongh faith alone ? Well may this be called the prize of our
high calling, if it were possible to express in words what that
prize is, — what that promised manifestation, — what that habitoal
indwelling, — we might hope to win mora of our fetlow-creatares
to strlTc for it ; but it is among the Siinge which it is not hiwful
(possible?) for a man to utter. There is something in this whioli
wordi — even though, like tliese of Christ's, they be spirit and
they be life — can neyer fully express. It is a reveiation made
by degrees to those who seek it, by a close and bumble walk
with God, in prayer and in the keeping of the conuuftudment.
Many sincere Christians, doubtless, fall short of it. Many, in-
deed, know not that there is such a prize, and have but faint per-
ceptions of anything to be striven for beyond what they already
possess. It seeme to me that there is a treasure hid in such say-
ings as these, ■' I will manifest myself unto hun," " we will make
our abode with him," which few among us even guess at. We
read the words as we might walk over the turf under which there
is hidden gold. It is a great matter, however, to have been made
aware of tlie esistence of the treasure, though we may as yat
have made email way towards taking possession of it. — J. E. B,

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88 A PRESENT HEAVEN:

yet we do not know whether He is our own or
not, and we are content to remain in imcer-
tainty. Yet the Good Shepherd, speaking of
the sheep for whom He laid down His life,
and for whom He has taken it again, says, " I
know my sheep, and am known of mine," — the
Church, for which Christ died, and for and in
which He even now liveth, has One within her
that uses no hesitating language. The Spirit
has spoken for the Bride, " My beloved is mine,
and I am His." Where there is uncertainty,
there will be all that coldness and indecision
which has rendered the epithet of the Saxon
king, " the Unready," so moumfiilly appropriate
to Christians in general. We are weighing our
claims when we ought to be urging them, prov-
ing our armor when we ought to be fighting in
it, seeking our Lord, when firmer, truer spirits
would be saying, " I have found Him whom my
soul loveth," and this because we have not been
careful to pierce into the blessedness of that
" mystery " of devout consolation, without which
prayer sinks into an exercise, obedience into
taskwork, and the sacraments are degraded into
a symbol, — Christ in us, the Hope of glory.

And if Christ be indeed within us, if we
are truly among the niunber of those who love
His appearing, we shall not long remain without

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 89

a sign of it ; it being as natural for Him to im-
part an evidence of Hia favor, as it is for the
human soul to require it. " What sign showest
Thou ? " the Jews asked of Him upon earth, a
question only made objectionable through the
cavilling spirit in which it was uttered, for it is
necessary to tlie mind of Man, and a part of its
reasonable nature, to seek to establish itself in
the certainty of whatever it would fain confide
in as true, or rest in as desirable. Wherever
interest may be excited or affection awakened, it
will demand some evidence, suitable to the nature
of the object concerned, to show that tlie affec-
tion is reciprocated, the interest assured ; and I
think in the case of our dearest interests we are
much the losei-s, by not acting as simply as we
should do in any affair of common life, and seek-
ing for the proof of our acceptance with God,
exactly where God has bid us look for it. No
man, says our Lord Himself, can do the works
of God, except God be with him ; and His
Apostle * repeats the same truth in another
form of words when he makes the keeping of
the commandment a signf unto ourselves, an

• And hereby me do kaoai that we know Him, if we keep His

commiDdments Wlioso keepetU His word, in liim verily

is the lova of God perfected; Aei'tij know we thatwe are in Him.
(IJohnii. S, 6.)

f i sign so Bure, so deeply satisfactory iu Us nature, that I

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90 A PRESENT HEA VEN.

evidence of our standing in that grace througb
which alone it can be performed. While some,
therefore, altogether ignore the witness of the
Spirit, and others place it in something vague
and intangible, an enthusiastic feeling, an ele-
vated impression, which they are dissatisfied if
they do not find, and finding, scarcely know
whether this is indeed what they have sought
or not, the testimony of God stands sure where
He has placed it. In the witness of afliliation,

Boraatimea find it hard to understand why wa should ask for any
other. I feel a sort of surprise in hearing Christians eipressing
a desire for lie restoration of the ChnroU's miracnlons gifts, or
■wishing, as individnaJa, for visltile answers to prayar, or other
seDSibls consolations of the Spirit. It sosms bo plain, that the
remainhig feithfu! to Divine grace in that which is least — say
in being able to mamtain a truly loving temper under unjust
provocation -* is a fuller, more intimate evidence of oontinoanee
■ in God's love, than nould be shown m the power of raising a.
dead body to life, or even in that more coveted power of baing
employed by God to rmae up a dead soul. " For rejoice not that
the spirits are made subject unto yon, but r^olca rather that
your names are written in Heaven." Let us rejoice in that we
are accepted and renewed in Christ, who has also ^ven ns the
earnest of His Spirit, making us of one heart, one way with Him,
to show us that we are indeed His.

Covet eamesUy the beat gifts. The passive graces, patience,
meekness, self-abnegation, Ihese are the miracles of ths Haw Cov-
enant. While many of the active virtues are merely the natural
energies transfigured and changed into a higher likeness, — ihe
earthly made to bear the image of the heavenly, — liese are most

"UnfeabyKatnie'BBfil."
Their root itself is in Christ, and in Him is their fruit found.

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4 PRESENT HEAVEN. 91

given in the Spirit of grace and of adoption,
whereby, in the conversion of the heart unto
God, we C17 unto Him, Abba, Father ; in the
■witness of assimilation, given in the mind re-
newed ai^er Christ's likeness, in righteousness
and true holiness, afier the Image in which it
was first created.

And here I might quit a subject which it is
impossible to exhaust, were it not that I desire
to explain myself more fully upon a point con-
nected with it, upon which, as yet, I have only
touched incidentally. I feel tiiat few Christians
will agree in what I have said, upon our equality
with the Apostles in respect of privileges and
capabilities in Christ, and we are slow to believe
in this equality, or to admit the scriptural infer-
ences on which it is founded, from a disposition,
very common, I think, among us, to look upon
the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit as being
something greater and more Godlike than its
ordinary graces : yet it does not requu^ a very
deep examination of Scripture * to prove that
the sanctifying grace still enjoyed by the Church,
and which can never depart from it, is a richer

• We see that ths disoiplas of our Lord hfui received from Him
wonder-working powers «t a tima when St. Jolin expressly telis
oa (ohap. Tii. 39) that the Holy Ghoat was not yet given. Yet
the Seventy could than return with joy, declaring that the devils
were subject to them. Compare also with this the twelfth chapter

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92 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

and more heavenly gift, containing in it a fiiUer
partJcipation in the Divine nature, than the mi-
raculous gifts granted to the Apostles, in order
to promote its first establishment. For it k evi-
dent tliat these last may be possessed, as in the
case of Balaam, and many other persons in-
stanced in the Old and New Testaments, with-
out that vital union of the soul with its Maker
which ia essential to the communication of the
latter. Balaam saw the vision of the Almighty,
and beheld the star arising out of Jacob, but the
Day-star, as Edwards * observes, never arose in
his heart, — he had an outward revelation, but
no spiritual discovery of Christ. His knowl-
edge, being exterior only, wrought no moral
change within, and, in the midst of extraordi-
nary mental illumination, he remained an infidel
at heart, even while enjoying an outward com-
munion with the God whom he neither loved
nor honored, nor, except by constraint, obeyed.
The case of this man may be considered in
some degree exceptional, because, under both
Covenants, the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit

of Kirst Corinthians, where St. Paul, after anumecating the vari-
oos eitraordinary gills then enjoyed by believera, concludes by
Baying, " Yet bLow I anto yon a more excalleut way," and goes
00 to nnfold the nature of a. grace, — even charity, — See Wea
ley's Tkins-iiinlh Sei-m<m.
* Edwards on the Eeligious AfTeotions.

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A PMESENT HEAVE?!: 93

have been in general accompanied by a measure
of grace in proportion ; but other instances * are
not wanting to show that these occasional influ-
ences of the Holy Ghost are not necessarily at-
tended with that communication of it tlirough
which we become partakers of the Divine Na-
ture, — a communication as far transcending
them as the permanent exceeds the temporary,
or the essential surpasses the merely accidental.
An over-estimation of the extraordinary work-
ings of the Spirit — sometimes manifested in an
uneasy anxiety for their recall — betrays that we
have not yet arrived at a due appreciation of its
crowning work, the imparting of its own nature
to the human soul, to which these outward en-
dowments subserved merely as means to an end.
And here we shall do well to bestow some
thought on a wonderfiil and little understood
text, f " He that believeth on me, the- works

• iBStanceB such as those of Gideon, Jephthsh, Samson, and
Saul, men of irregular lives and uoconrerted hearts, yet spoken
of as being, at certain .times and upon eitraordinary cocas iona,
under Ihe immedi t fl f h Sp nt fGod re ugh

to prove that a tempo ry d I gi t f Goii po b be-

stowed, withont p rt th t mm t f H N tnro

which Is mseparabl f m th 1 1 t perat f b t fying

grace. The Sew T t m t film h an t ample of

this in the case of C ph wh b g H gh P t,pnphe3ied,
in Tirtue of his offi f th gl rj f H m wh m h waa even
then taking counsel to destroy.

t John xiv. 12.

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94 A rRESENT HEAVEN.

that I do shall he do also, and greats works than
these shall he do, because I go unto my Father."
In these words, " the works that I do," oiir
Saviour alludes to His visible miracles exerted
in the Kingdom of Nature, and exhibiting His
rule and sovereignty over it. These, in splen-
dor and variety, were never surpassed by the
Apostles ; and as the degree of power over
material things wbich the Lord of Nature was
pleased to delegate to His first servants was not
long continued to tho Church, it has become
evident that the outward Signs and Tokens
which accompanied the founding of our Saviour's
Empire on earth do not form part of the econ-
omy by which that empire is sustained, and that
it is not in the Kingdom of Nature, the kingdom
without us, that we are to look for the fulfilment
of the promise. It is, therefore, in Christ's other
kingdom, even the Kingdom of Grace within us,
and in the greats works that belong to it, that
we must expect to see its abundant realization.
Here, through the Spirit of God, acting with
Man's spirit in the sphere of ordinary Christian
exertion, the blind may still receive their sight,
the lepers be cleansed, the spiritually dead be
raised to life ; and why are these works greater,
inasmuch as spirit transcends matter, than any
outward miracle even now possible ? Why are

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A PMESENT HEA VEN. 95

all things, falling within these boundaries that
God hath appointed, possible to hhn that behev-
eth ? Because, saith our Lord, I go to my Father ;
go to receive gifts for men, yea, even for the re-
bellions, that tlie Lord their God may dwell
among themj — go to make and to keep open a
Highway for the people whom I have redeemed ;
go to pray for them, to strengthen them, to pro-
vide thera with an indwelling Comforter, — the
Spirit of Truth and of Peace, the Spuit of Wis- '
dom and Revelation, the Spirit of Love and of
Power. If ye loved me, or yourselves in me,
ye would rejoice, because I go unto the Father.

Until, therefore, it is proved that the Son is
now less present with the Father than when He
first ascended up to Him, the Spirit less present
with the Church now than when it was at first
bestowed, it seems difficult to discover what ad-
vantage, as regards the things that helong to life
and godliness, the primitive age possessed over
our own, or upon what grounds we accustom
ourselves to contemplate tlie piety, zeal, and love
of the first Christians, as we might look upon
some old master-work in painting or stauied
glass, — an excellence rather to be marvelled
at than attained to. Yet we have no need to
envy then' privileges and endowments, only to use
our own. They were in possession of no secrets

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96 A PRESENT HEAVEN:

to which we have not, now the key; and if we
knew what the trne Gift of God is, and felt in
how much ail of an outward kind that even He
has to be'-tow upon us, ia exceeded by that ac-
cess til His Presence and union with His Na-
ture, which it lies within the feithful acceptance
and use of our ordinary Christian privileges to
impart,* we should confess that they wiio have
the Giver have all, and need not mourn over the
withdrawal of any particular gift. We regret
the things which have been taken away, chiefly
through our imperfect recognition of the things
which remain. Though miracles, tongues, and
ppophesyinga have ceased, " now abideth" Faith,

• " One slaadard of life," says Neander, " applies to aB Clirii-
tiani; tho differBDca, aa regards the reception of fiod's truth, be-
tween the inspired Prophet and the ordinary believer is one of
degree, not at kind,"

And it is surely Tary instructive to observe how much strasa
the Apostles lay npon that which is general, how little upon that
which is pecnlisr, in their own position in Christ, — how simply
they place their oonverfs just where they stand themaalvaa. As
man before whom a great work baa been set by God, they know
that they have been endowed by Him with eminent gifts and
graces, and to this St. Paul occasionally testifies with devout
thankfulness, as when he magnifies bis office. Tet even such an
office seems tnt a small thing to one who, being joined unto the
Lord, knows what it is to be of one Spirit with Him and His.
" There are diversitiea of operations, but one Lord." It matters
little whether a member's office appears more or lasa honorable,
whether he be foot or hand, to long atheUoflht Body, living on
its fulness, and growing with its growth. " And we," says St.
Paul, "are members of His body, of His Seah, and of His bones."

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A PRESENT HEA VEN. 97

Hope, Chanty ; * and how much, inasmuch as-
the moral is more noble than the material, is a
grace better than a gift ! How much does the
House, eyen Sanctification, or the renewal of
man's body, soul, and spirit nnto God, exceed
in glory that by means of which it was builded I
The outward exhibitions of God's providence
are like the strong wind which rends the moun-
tains, — like the earthquake and the tire, they
declare His Majesty and Awfulness, they show
us that the Lord passes by,f but He Himself
is in the stiU small voice.

God Himself is there. Does not the knowl-
edge of this, in the fact that the Almighty, in
the communication of the Holy Spirit, imparts
His own nature to the human soul, wonderfully
extend and deepen the sense of our spiritual re-
lations with Him, and give a yet fuller meaning
to our Lord's saying, " Whatsoever ye shall ask
in my name, believing, ye shall ipceive " ?

Believing, ye shall receive all things, even God
Himself. For eVen as earthly fathers, of such
things as they have, give good gifts unto their
children, even so will our Heavenly Father,
because He can bestow nothing greater, impart
Himself to those in whom in His one beloved
Son He is well pleased. God, who so loved the

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98 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

world that He gave His only begotten Son to
die for it, that the world through Him might be
saved, communicates through the Spirit that
love which was manifested in the Sou;* and
this communication is set before ua in Scripture
as the great object of prayer — may we not say
that it is the final object of all prayer, the ful-
ness of the blessing of the Gospel St. Paul
spoke of, making its every gift and promise our
own ? And if the gift — that which our Heav-
enly Father will give to them that ask Him —
is the object of all prayer, is not its increase —
that which He will make to abound more and
more in them that serve Him — the object of all
endeavor? While from him that bath not —
from bim who possesses not that which is his
own — shall be taken away, gradually perhaps,
hut surely, even that which he hath, antil the
ligiit that is in him, bis portion of the true light
which !ightene|ji every man that cometh into
the world, is turned into darkness, — " To him
that hath shall be given, and be shall have
abundance." He shall receive of gifts without
measure as they are without price. ■ He shall be
satisfied with the plenteousness of Grod's house,
and shall drink of its pleasures as out of the
river : " Eat, O fi:iends ; drink, yea, drink abun-
dantly, beloved."

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IV.

THE GOSPEL RECEIVED PROPHETICALLY.
"Say not in thin= b«rt. Who shjll ascend inlo heaven ! Uia. is, to bring

(fMONG the truths which Revelation
makes known to us, there are some
which so directly approve themselvea
to our human consciousness, so meet
its inner wants, so satisfy its upward aspirations,
that the soul, cheered by the sunshine they cast
round them, is apt to repose in it with a too ex-
clusive complacency. And among these divine-
ly estahhshed (acts I know not one to which the
heart of Man, wounded by the sorrows, and
wearied with the troubles of the present life,
has responded with a wider or more universal
consent than has been accorded to the scrijitural
testimony upon which the happiness of the dead
who die in the Lord is established. To the
Voice which has proclaimed them " blessed,"

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100 ^ PRESENT HEA VEN.

the Spirit has made answer in a "yea" as fer-
vent as earth ever sent back to heaven.

" Yea, it is well with Ihem, tlieir course is finished,
For them there is no longer any future."

We know that they have passed into a state,
waiting for whose perfection, not only we, who
have the First Fruits of the Spirit, but tiie
whole of God's natural creation, groan and trav-
ail togetlier in pain, — a state wherein they know
even as they are known, and love even as they
are loved, — a state wherein they have arrived
at that ftill "apprehension" of Christ which His
most favored servants upon earth have confessed
that they must still reach after. Yet I think,
while it is impossible in thought or word or
prayer to dwell with too much dehght upon the
coining in of that which is perfect, we should be
carefiil In doing so to remember that the Prom-
ise of the Future, fondly as we are inclined to
rest upon it, is /imply contingent upon that
■which it only seems to exceed in glory, — the
unspeakable gift vouchsafed to us in the Pres-
ent. We must not allow a shadow, although
it be the shadow of good things to come, to
eclipse, even for a moment, the substance of good
things already obtained. The promise grows
out of the gift ; and that ^ft is " Christ in us,"
out of which the hope of glory, its exceeding

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 101

and eternal weight, unfolds by way of natural

" He that hath the Son hath life " ; — a deep-
ened sense of this truth would work within us a
dissatisfection with the vague impressions which,
upon many points connected with death aud the
future state, have too much taken the place of
Gospel realities among us. In explaining what
I now mean, I need only draw your attention to
the manner in which, in those unpremeditated
expressions which reveal our real sentiments far
more clearly than any guarded statement of
opinion, we are accustomed to refer to the sepa-
ration of the soul and body. As Christians we
permit ourselves, upon this awful subject, to use
language strangely inconsistent with our name
and profession, — language which, if reduced to
its true sense and value, would go far to mate it
appear that we had chosen death, not Christ for
our Saviour, and which, even under every al-
lowance for the vagueness of popular expression,
betrays an ignorance of the nature and condi-
tions of spiritual life, that leaves us, in the very
heart of our Chtistian privileges, in a sort of
Jewish Estate, wherein, as if unsatisfied with
Him who is already come, we seem to be yet
looking for another. Nothing is so common as
to hear Death spoken of as the entrance to a

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102 -1 PRESENT HEAVEN.

better life,* nor is it unusual even from the pul-
pit to listen to expressions which imply tliat the
soul, so long as it remains united to its weaker
partner, must inevitably partake of its imper-
fection, to a degree which draws its capacity for
spiritual attainments and enjoyments within very
narrow hmits.

True it is that so long as we continue in the
body we have yet to wait for that body's fall re-
demptjon,t anticipating which the natural crea-
tion and the regenerated spirit of man groan
together, "being burdened." The "earnest ex-,
pectation" even of the natural heart impels it to
hope and onward looking, far more does that of
the renewed nature urge it upon the thought of
final deliverance from a bondage yet not wholly
broken, a contradiction yet notfiiUy overcome.
Se that is dead w freed from idn. Yet we must
never forget that not only Immortality but Life
has been brought to light by the Gospel, and we
ought jealously to guard against whatever tends
to invest it with a promissory, and, so to speak,
prophetic aspect, by transferring its cardinal
benefits to a future period and remote scene of
existence ; and thus, by implication, deprives the
meritorious satisfaction of our Saviour — the One
Foundation upon which Scripture authorizes us
• See Note H, t Boiao"3 viii. 23,

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 103

to build up our whole spiritual life — of the na-
ture of a real and effected work.* When we
look to Death to admit us to priyileges which
are already conferred upon us in the blood of
reconciliation, we imply that this ftiU, perfect,
and sufficient Sacrifice, like the Legal offerings
which prefigured it, does not contain within it
that which can make the comers thereto perfect.
We take the Key from off the shoulder of the
true Ehakim, " who openeth and no man shut^
teth," whenever we look to death to subdue, as
by some magical process, an enmity which Christ
has already taken away, and to effect a reconcil-
iation which, by One offering, He has perfected
forever. When we speak as if we expected a
merely natural event, such as the dissolution
of our bodily forces, to exert some mysterious

* Whei'BTer there is a transference of the Blessings of the
Gospel to B, Future time, aa wherever there is a limitation of
them m the Preaeut, there exiats, as I observad in my Second
Letter, an ttnauspeoted disposition to bring down the Atonement
from a Reality to a Type, — to reduce it from something done, to
flomething meraly foreehown and promised. Yet it ia not, like
the Patriarch, " in ii figure," that the Christian miist receive that
Lord, who, when ha asoeudeil up on high, and led captiTe our
Race's long Captivity, received for as men, not promises, but
gitb. As He that dwells among us is alive foreverniore, so are
all the beueflta included m His Work and In His Abiding, real,
living, and immediate, and the Blessings of the New Covenant,
of which He ia the Minister, are in the strictest sense as temporal
— that is, as surely our own in tUs present life — aa were tlie
Blessings of the Elder one.

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104 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

influence upon tlie relations on which the life of
the soul depends, we only prove that we have
not yet, even in thought, probed to the deep-
sunken foundation of all spiritual vitality. We
betray the same confusion of spiritual with nat-
ural existence, and the same inability to distin-
guish between each in its separate province,
which made Nicodemus ask, when urged to en-
ter into a new and higher life, " How can a man
enter a second time into his mother's womb, and
be bom ? " Our Lord's answer places the dis-
tinction in the clearest light : —

" That which is bom of the flesh' is flesh.
That which is born of the Spunt is spirit. Mar-
vel not, therefore, that I said unto thee. Ye must
be bom again."

" That which is bora of the flesh is flesh," —
a natural process is suflicient for a natural end,
but it can go no farther. A spiritual operation
demands for its accomplishment a spiritual en-
ergy. As none can enter into God's natural
kingdom, or partake of the Hfe which belongs to
it, without passing through the appointed channel
of natural birth, so is it, by analogy, witli every
one that is born of the Spirit. None can enter
into the kingdom of grace, or become a partaker
of its spiritual Hfe, but by means of the processes
and conditions upon which it has been made to

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 105

To set these two states of existence —
the life through which man . hecomes a living
soul, and the life by which he is made a quick-
ened spirit — clearly before us, — to see how, in
the case of each one amongst us, they hold on
their course, together yet distinct, — is to he
aware that neither life nor death, nor any other
creature, that is, any power or energy belonging
to Goli's natural kingdom, can influence the
spiritual relations to which our renewed exist-
ence has been attached. With regard to the
nature of this renewed life, the Scriptures have
been most explicit, equally so as to the condi-
tions by wliich it holds. Tliey acquaint us with
a state of being to he attained to, not through
death, but through Him who hath overcome it,
and opened for us the gate of everlasting life ;
they unfold to us in its amplest particulars the
character of this eternal life as revealed to us in
the person of Christ Jesus, to whom alone it has
been given to have life in Himself,* and from
whom all our life is derived. They set this life
before us in contradistinction to its true antago-
nist. Spiritual death, or the alienation of the soul
from God, and show us that it is from this death,)

t When St Panl, in the agony of hia meiittil conflict, asks,
Who shall deliver ma from the body of this death, the law of sin
which is in my members? he finds an answer in laokuig to a

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106 A. PRESENT HEAVEN.

even the darkness and decay, the bondage of cor-
ruption to which the natural heart is subject,
that we must pass by spiritual regeneration into
the life and liberty of the children of G<r$.
They speak plainly as to the conditions by which
this life is attained to and supported : Faith in
Him who hath obtained it for us. "He that

spiritual Changs, not to a natural onaj " the law of the Spirit of
Life ia Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and
daath." He does not wait for the dissolntion of the flesh to ob-
tain freedom from the bondage of ila corruption, but places his
deliverancB from it in Him ■who, coming in the likeness of sinful
flesh, in that flesh overcame sin, and has given nnto them that are
in Him the power lo overcome it, " even aa He also overcame."
We are apt to spealt as if it were the natural body which sepa-
rates the human spirit from its Matter. Yetit is not the flesh, but
that which remains in it, the carnal mlnd_ at enmity against God,
which constitutes the only true ground of alienation from Him.
Many things may hide God from ns, one thing only can separata
us ftom Him, unresisted, unrepented sin; and the flesli, though
it may draw a veil between the soul and God's presence, that
light unto which no man jiving can approach, can oppose no
barrier between it and its favor. " They who are in the flesh
caunot please God," by which espression it is evident, from what
follows, St. Paul means, not the remaining in the natural bod.v,
but the continuing in the natural, unrenewed mind, for " Ye," he
says, " are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit^ if so be that the
Spirit of God dweUeih in you." Oar popular notions respecting

death, a

e prevailing disposition to connect the soul's per-

]s separation from Ihe body, seem based upo
unconscious Manicheism, which, supposing an inherency of evil
in Matter, places it as the antagonist of God. We seam to forget
that Christ ia " the Saviour of the body," as well aa the Re-
deemer of the Eouli the Preserver ajid Sanctlfler of the whole Na-
ture, body, soul, and spirit, which, in bemg made Man, He toot
upon Himself forever.

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 107

i on the Son hath everlasting life. He
that heheveth not the Son shall not see life, but
the wrath of God, the darkness and shadow of
death, abideth on him."

And here, I think, we have especial need of
the work of the Comforter. When we have
received the witness of the Spirit hearing wit-
ness with our spirit that we are the children of
God, and," if children, then lidri, our experience
works hope, and gives us, as it were, ground to
stand upon in heaven. They who have received
the Earnest * know enough of the Inheritance,
and of Him in whom they have obtained it,
to see clearly that spiritual and eternal life are
identical. AH renewed life, being one with that
of the Renewer, is one life ; the same life,
whether its outward circumstances be more or
less happy, — whether, in short, it be spent in
heaven above, or upon earth below. And to
speak of our present and our future life in
Christ as being in any way separate from each
otJier, is to draw a distinction which our Lord
Himself is most careful to avoid. " He that
believeth on me liaik everlasting hfe." On this
point, as you long ago observed to me, the very
wording of. Scripture is guarded ; there is no
fiiture employed, it is not " shall have," Ijut
» Eph. i. 14.

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108 A PRESENT HEA YEN.

"hath," — hath now everlasting life, — a Kie be-
gun in Christ ; and over a life so begun, it is
evident that no outward accident, such as the
dissolution of the bodily organs, can exert any
empire. When the breath of man goeth forth,
he turns again to his dust. At the touch of
death, the flower and grass of our natural life
fiJl away and perish, but the Word of God, and
that which is born of it, endureth forever. Our
spiritual life lies in a region far removed from
the influence of any natural event or change ;
it is hid in Christ : and St. Paul proves how
much our future life in Him is but the continua-
tion and expansion of that which, even in the
flesh, we live by the faith of the Son of God,
when he says, " When Christ, who is our life,
shall appear, then shall ye also appearwith Him
in glory."

The real life will then he also the visible and
apparent one ; and in dwelhng upon this, the
manifestation of the sons of God, for which St.
Paul represents the faithfiil as waiting in earnest
expectation, we learn in what the true blessed-
ness of death consists. Though it cannot, ac-
cording to the popular phrase, admit us to a
better life, it will give those who have already
attained to the one life — the life which is in
Christ Jesus — a better world wherein to live :

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 109

it will immeasurably extend and glorify the out-
ward conditions under whiclj the development
of that life will proceed. Our present life in
Christ may be compared to that of the seed ; a
hidden life, contending underground against cold
and darkness and obstructions, yet bearing within
its breast tbe indestructible germ of vitality.
Death lifts the soul into the sunshine for which
a hidden, invisible work has prepared it. Heaven
is the life of the flower.

It is enough for the disciple that he be as his
Master ; for the servant that he be as his Lord.
Our present life in Christ is like the life which
He hved upon earth ; a Jife harassed and tempt-
ed, sometimes agonized, often sorrowful ; a life
wherein He was not" alone, because the Father
was with Him ; yet a life which those who loved
Him were none the less called upon to rejoice
when He laid it down, and returned to the
bosom of that Father's love. Our future life
will be like that which He leads there. " Where
I am, there shall also my servant be." While
prraent with the body, we remain, in a natural
sense, absent from the Lord. Our communion
with Him is only spiritual, and therefore inca-
pable of affording the fulness of content to a
being endowed with both spiritual and natural
fecultiea. It cannot be with us in the Taber-

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110 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

nacle *. as it -wiH be in the House. Here, one
half of US groans; being burdened, waiting for
the redemption of tlie body, the final swallowing
up of mortality in life, which is the promised
restitution of all things, admitting both body
and soul and spirit into the glorious liberty of
the children of God. No marvel, then, that
they who can say with St. Paul, "to live is
Christ," should with him also say, " to die is
gain." No marvel that the soul which has tasted
of the first fruits which are holy, should long to
be where the lump also is holy. No marvel that
the spirit should awaken within the regenerate
soul a desire to depart and to be with Christ,
that its inner consciousness should testify to the
existence of something " far better" than is here
to be enjoyed, "For he," saith our Saviour,
speaking of the Comforter, " sha!l show you
things to come." And in accordance with these
words, whilst iitde in the direct letter of Scrip-
ture has been told us of the mystery of future
blessedness, much, in this great matter, has been
ehoitm us by way of a spiritual analogy, which
testifies that the recreated world is in all re-
spects foreshown and typified by the regenerate
soul. In the mind renewed after the image in
which it was first created, the Divine order is

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A PRESENT heaven: m

' begun, — the key-note of the harmony
to which God will in the end reduce all His
works, is already struck. We often say that
we can know at present nothing about heaven ;
and are accustomed to quote in support of this
a text which proves, when taken in connection
with what goes before and follows it, that we
know or may know a great deal. I refer to
1 Cor. ii. 9, 10.

" Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither
have entered into tlte heart of man, the things
which God hath prepared for tjiem that love
Him.

" But Q-od hoik revealed them unfa uB by Mi%
Spirit ; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea,
the deep things of God."

These words, and those which follow in the
twelfth verse, " Ifow we have reamed of tlie
Spirit wldch is of God, to know the things
which have been freely given ns of Him," and,
indeed, the whole tenor of the chapter, make it
evident that the Apostle is not looking beyond
the time that now is. The mystery* with which
his thoughts are occupied is the life of God

■ I Cot. ii. T. — " We apeak the wisdom of God in a mjalery,
even the liidden wisdom, which God ordained before tlie WOTid
unto onr glory; whicli none of the princes of Ihia world linew;
for if they had known it, they would not have ornoifled the Lord
of glory."

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112 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

within the human soul, — that "preparation of
the heart of man," wherein He reveals Himself
after a manner not to be apprehended by out-
ward sense, or recognized by natural perception.
It ia the heaven within us, and not the heaven
above us, that the Apostles would here unfold
to us : he is concerned, not with such things of
God as we have yet to wait for, but with such
as we have already received. " God," he says,
" hath revealed them unto us by His Spirit."

And we know much of heaven, if it be but
in the initials and rudiments, wherein, in the
lively characters of love, peace, joy, and devout
conformity to His will, God's finger has traced
it in the regenerate %ouI. We speak more truly
than we are aware of when we say, as we often
do, that we can form no idea of what heaven
really is, until we arrive there. The regenerate
soul is already in heaven, being by the indwell-
ing of tlie Fatiier, Son, and Spirit in possession
of that which truly constitutes it. To be with
God, in whatever stage of being, under what-
ever conditions of existence, is to be in heaven.
To be found in Him, a citizen of His lower
kingdom of grace, is to possess that which gives
His upper kingdom its glory ; for there, even as
here, " a man's life does not consist in the abun-
dance of the thin^ which he possesses " ; and

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A PRESENT heaven: ns

it is not either hearing or seeing, not either hav-
ing or beholding, that can constitute its joy.
The rainbow round about the throne, in sight
like unto an emerald ; the sea of glass mingled
with fire, the gate of pearl, the voice of harpers
harping with their harps ; — all these might be
ours, without the capability of imparting a ray
of genuine blessedness. They might pass away,
yet heaven wonid not pass with them. For
these are but the accidental properties of heaven.
Its essentials consist in that without which tliese
wonders and glories a tliousand-fold repeated
could convey nothing beyond a momentary grat-
ification of the senses. And happiness, be its
object earthly or Divine, resides in the corre-
spondence between the inner need and its out-
ward satisfaction : it is the answer to the soul's
call, the accomplishment of its desire, the satis-
fying of its yearning. "I beheld," saith St
John, "and a door was opened." Heaven is
the opening of a door : it is the finding of a
long-sought good, the renewal of a long-lost
communion, the restoration to a. fevor which is
in itself the ftdness of joy.

The Gospel has brought down Heaven into our
souls ; God's message of reconciliation has plant-
ed within us a germ, out of which He can mould
at will a Universe of Blessedness. I think an

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114 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

unconscious Materialism mingles largely In the
vague spirituality, or rather indefinitism, of our
ideas with regard to our Future Life : we think,
in a certain sense, too much of the palpable
glories of Heaven, too little of that in which
they consist. It is the Altar which sanctifies
the gold, — the Presence of Him tliat dwelleth
therein which consecrates the Temple. We
must never, in our contemplations on this great
subject, forget that not only hath He who buildeth
the house "more honor than the house itself,"
hut tliey also for whom it is builded. Yet we
dc so, when, in favor of any of God's outward
works, be it the Heaven which He hath made
for Himself, or the Earth which He liath given
to the children of men, we lose sight of His
work within us, that crowning achievement of
Almighty wisdom and infinite love, which it cost
even God so much to bring to perfection. For
the Heavens, which are God's throne, like our
Earth, which is His footstool, were called out of
nothingness by the simple exercise of the Divine
energy. " He spake, and they were made ; He
commanded, and they stood fest for ever." There
was no pang here, no effort ; what a word is to
man, such is a world to God, the simple expres-
sion of His thought. This visible Temple to
God's praise and glory, the system of which our

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 115

Earth forms part, rose like an exhalation out of
the Sea of His fulness silently, or to sucL music
as the morning stars, God's eldest-bom, made
when they sang and shouted together for joy.

Thus was it with the work of Creation ; but
Redemption, as the Psalmist telis us, " cost
more " : the foundation of these outer Courts
was laid in harmony ; but when God would re-
pair their desolations, and raise up from the dust
His mined shrine witlun, it was through the
anguish of a wise and loving Master builder.
Each one of the living stones whereof God's
spiritual house is framed, bears upon it the dint
of His travail, — that travail of the Soul whose
sweat was blood. And now that the hands*
of Him who laid the foundations of the reno-
vated Temple have also finished it; now that
the headstone thereof has been brought forth
vrith shoutings of " Grace, grace," let us beware
how we read History for Prophecy, and look to
a future state for blessings which are abundantly
our own in our present one. To do so, augurs,
as I have said, a secret distrust in the efficacy
of the blood of reconciliation, sufficient to save
those who come unto it, even to the uttermost,
— sufficient for our sins, our sorro\ys, and our
imperfection ; the blood of healing as well as ot

• Zecli, [v. 7, 8.

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116 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

Atonement ; the sign of freedom as well as of
pardon, procuring us a present, and not, as we
fondly ima^ne, a fixture restoration to God's
fevor, and making our souls in His sight, as
the Disciples were made in tlte wasliing which
prefigured it, " clean every whit."

This, even our Lord's meritorious sacrifice, is
the gate of the Lord, wherein we may even now
enter and be glad, and that to which it conducts,
the fulness of life and joy in Him, is the true
heaven ; whether it he found in God's kingdom
of grace below, " which is but glory begun," or
in His kingdom of glory above, "which is but
grace completed,"

The soul, in uniting itself to Christ through
a lively feith, enters of necessity into the imme-
diate fruition of the fulness which is laid up in
Him, — its immediate yet gradual fruition. The
soul's true life has begun. Yet it has need to
be nourished, need to be strengthened. It is
not all at once made perfect in that love, which
is, to speak truly, but faith grown to its fullest
stature. For when faith has for its object a Be-
ing " altogether lovely," it must turn to love in
exact proportion with its own increase. To
know Him better is to love Him more ; and to
this knowledge and this love, it is plain that tha

• ArcliblBliop Leighton.

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A PRESENT heaven: in

mere passing out of one phase of existence into
another can never admit us. It is not death
but feith that must conduct us to heaven ; for it
is faith only that can conduct us to iove. Death
may, indeed, admit to tlie immediate presence
of the Almighty, hut it is through faith and love
that His presence is made unto us the ftilness of
joy. Without a spiritual acquaintance with our
Maker, even in His hght our souls would not
see light. We might look upon our Saviour in
His glorified form, as so many of old beheld
Him under His human aspect, without seemg
Him as He is ; and the touch which seals up our
eyes to the things of earth cannot endue them
with this spiritual insight. Death's cold hand
cannot draw us nearer God : it is intrusted with
no Gospel. His silent lips, though they may
ofttimes bear on them God's kiss, are charged
with no message of reconciliation.

What we have made God to us in this world,
we shall find Him in the atler one ; for the out-
ward heaven, think of it as we will, is hut the
consummation of that inward one already es-
tabhshed in every heart, made through God's
grace, in the communication of His Spirit, a
"partaker in the Divine nature." It is the
efflorescence of spiritual life in its fullest bloom :
it is the permanent blossoming of the Christian

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lis A PRESENT HEA YEN.

graces, buds not wholly expanding here : it 13
love, joy, and peace made visible, made perfect,
made perpetual. To the soul already renewed
after God's likeness, it is but, in the words of
tlie Psalmist, the " awaking up " to the blissfiil
sense of a perfect assimilation. To the heart
already reconciled with its Heavenly Friend, it
is but the consciousness of happiness that has
long been its own : it is only, as a saintly spirit
has expressed it, a transference to the sunshine
of our Father's sensible smiles, — a sunshine that
has been upon it long.

For happiness, let us understand this well, is
as truly our portion here as above ; it cannot
fail to fall within the lot of those who have
chosen for their portion Him whose nature Js
One with infinite, unalienable Joy. God, in
communicating Himself to the soul, of necessity
communicates happiness ; and all sounds in
union with Him have returned* to their central
rest, and are happy in exact proportion to the
closeness and fulness of their union, — happy, in
other words, by so much as they have within
them of God. The reconciled sou^ has, there-

• Our T«ry thirst after happiness, one very search for it Ihrougli
unworlhy objects, is at once a proof of our descent from God,
and a witneaa of our tfindency towards reunion with Him from
whom we came. Sea 011 this subject Johu Smith's Select Dit^

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 119

fore, a rigid to be at all times joyful, becau=!e it
possesses a solid, unalienable ground of hap-
piness ; but this right it is not at all times able
either to realize or to make good in this world,
■wherein tlie child, although he be heir of all,
differs ofttimes not much from a servant, in re-
spect of the things -which he has to endure.
Bodily and mental infirmities, imperfect views
of the Divine character, above aU, the lingerings
of indwelling corruption (that which doth re-
main within Bs, though it may reign no longer),
rise like damps and mists to obscure the contin-
ual irradiation which would otherwise, in the jus-
tified soul, follow upon the simple' consciousness
of its own position, Joy is conscious happiness.
We may possess the reality of happiness with-
out the enjoyment of it ; we often do so in tem-
poral things, being more rich, more beloved'
than we know of; and even thus with the soul
it has already the rich reality, but it needs the'
fuller consciousness ; its acceptance is already
complete, its union is already perfect, but of the
fulness of this acceptance, the sweetness of this
union, it seems as yet imperfectly aware. It
seems, as you observe in your last letter,* inca-

• " No one confessed more fiilly than St. Paul thnt ha was
complete in Christ now; jet ha says, speaking of the fntnra
stale, ' ikm shall I know even as I am known,' which shows, I
think, that lie saw Christ's work as regarded him to be perfect,

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120 A PRESEXrr HEAVEN.

pable, under its present cwiditions, of attaining
to the perfect apprehension of the things fon
which, as St. Paul says, it has been already ap-
prehended of Christ.

Heaven is the perfect recognition, the com-
plete reciprocation, of that Love from which
neither things to come, nor things present,
neither Death, nor, as so many among us seem
to imagine. Life, can separate us. " Beloved,"
says St. John, " jtow are we the Sons of God ;
and it doth not yet appear what we shall he,
but we know that when He shall appear we
shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as Ho
Heaven is the becoming conscious of an
' f-formed assimilation, the knowing as we

bnt Hcknowledgea that hi9 own power of embracing it does cot
as jet eqnal that perfection, for ha describea himself, in ajiother
place, as 'following afler,' that he may apprehend, or lay hold of,
that for which also he is apprehended of Christ. And here lies,
I conceiTC, the difference between our presant and our future
fetala. On Christ's part, nothing fnrther will be done or required,
only Wfl shaJl then bs quickened to apprehend what has been done
for us, — to lay hold of Christ, to see clearly and to know fnlly
how fast He had hold of us from the beginning, even before we
knew it; ajid la this sense it seems to me our union after death
must be mors perfect than it can be before it. They to whom
Christ is even now united in bonde that admit of no farther per-
fecting, will be awakened to the full oonscionsness of their uuionj
and it will be the difference between a mutnal, livhig recognition
and embrace, and a greeting in which one fully conacions draws
to his bosom the fainling and half-conscions form of his Mend."
— J.E.B.

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 12I

have so long beon known. To the feitlifo] Dis-
ciples wlio walked with their Lord along the
common track, it is but the taking up upon the
Mount, and beholding Him, whom they have so
long loved and followed, " transfigured before
them." Faith and love are already at home in
Heaven ; with all that will meet them there,
they have already, under lowher aspects, be-
come ^miliar. If we know what it is to love
God and to be beloved of Him, we shall no
longer speak of Heaven as if it were a place of
which we can at present know nothing. We
shaU not be content to let this good land, our
purchased inheritance, float before us in misty
outline, like Fortunate Islands lying fer amid
doubtful seas, and to be reached (if ever gained
at all) after the hap of oJden mariners, blown
upon them by some propitious gale ; for few
among us seem to be so sailing by line and com-
pass, as to know whether we are going there or
not. Yet whither I go, saith the Lord, j/e know,
ind the Way ye know ; if ye know Me, neither
the end nor the way can he un&miliar.

To acquaint ourselves with Christ is to be-
come acquainted with Heaven. It is to be able
to speak of it, as was said of a Saint of old, as
of a place where we have already been, and
from whence we have but returned upon an

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122 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

errand. There is no other possession which has
been made our own with so much certainty, no
other place of which, vaguely as we allow our-
selves to speak of it, we really know so much*
If we, indeed, know little about Heaven, it is
only because we know little about God, and
Jesus Christ in whom He is revealed ; for this,
the true spiritual acquaintance with God, "is
life eternal." Little, it is true, has been made
known to ua of the outward constitution of our
future commonwealth, much has been imparted
to us of its inward conditions, and this through
experience, — good things given instruct us in
good things prepared. Love that "prepares"
Many Mansions for us, prepares us for what we
shall find in them. We are so ignorant of the
Divine economy which regulates our everlasting
habitations, that the mere attempt to guess at
what will be there our probable habita, pursuits,
and occupations, involves us in a thousand diffi-
culties and contradictions ; and yet, while we
know not how we shall then live, we know in
kind, if not in degree, how we shall then fed.
Here, while the form and outline are strange to
us, the imperishable essence is famihar: we can-
not define either the shape or color of this,
God's glorious Kose, we only know it through
its fragrance, unfolding in the regenerate soul

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 123

of man. "We cannot paint this flower, jet love,
and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost convey
within our hearts a suhtle sense of its odor, and
instruct us in the highest secrets of Heaven.

And I would once again ask in what, save in
degree only, do the characteristics of renewed
life, under its present conditions, differ from re-
newed life under its future ones, — in what re-
spect can dtey essentially vary ? Is it not the
same hfe maintaining its identity under differ-
ent phases and developments, just as an indi-
vidual retains his personality, an affection its
strength and sweetness, under outward circum-
stances of the most varied and dissimilar char-
acter? There are few of us, perhaps, so en-
tirely limited within the circle of the things
that now appear, as not to have sometimes sent
a thought across the visible horizon which hounds
it, and asked if the world which lies beyond is,
after all, even in its outward aspect, so totally
unlike our present one as we are apt to imagine.
Will they differ from each other more than one
star differs from another in glory ? and are we
not justified in presuming that, manifold as are
the works of God, they are in all respects peiv
vaded by a certain harmony, the result of that
wisdom in which He hath made them all ?

Such questions, only Heaven itself, and the

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124 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

light which makes all things manifest, can an-
swer ; though analogy can suggest much, it can
determine little; and on all points connected
with the outward frame and constitution of our
future life, the silence of Scripture leayes us
little room to speak particularly: — but when
we come to a question of fer deeper practical
import, and ask oureelves in how fer, as regards
that which is within, our present life may re-
semble the future one which grows out of it,
these oracles of God give forth no uncertain
answer. They acquaint us with a gradual
moulding and fashioning, the work of no hu-
man artificer, through which that which hes
witliin us, as the statue lies within the rude and
shapeless block, begins even here to assume
the hkeness in which it will hereafter attain its
final beauty and perfection. When they speak
to us of our deliverance from the power of
darkness and our translation into the kingdom
of G-od's dear Son, they set before us a state
of being in which love to God is even here the
governing principle of life, the mainspring of
thought and action, as it is with them, His min-
isters above that do His pleasure, and find in it
their own ; a state in which the human will,
like the angelic, attains to such measure of con-
formity with the Divine law, that it follows on

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 126

the direction of God's Spirit, in the nnforced
obedience, which, as the Prophet Ezekiel * wit-
nesses, runs and returns as the appearance of a
flasli of lightning : " Whithersoever the Spirit
was to go, thither was their spirit to go ; they
turned not when they went." Our heavenly
Master is not, as the slotlifiil, unfiiithfiil servant
thought Him, " a hard man," commanding and
expecting impossibilities. Whatever God tells
us to do, He also helps us to do. Our Saviour,
who knows whereof we are made, sends us on no
vain errands, sets us upon no unprofitable tasks.
Whatever He makes an object of prayer, is also,
far that very reason, an object of attainment ;
and He it is who hath taught and commanded
us, when we pray, to say, —

" Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven."
" Ezekiel 1. 14.

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V.

THE GOSPEL RECEIVED IMPLICITLY.

^ N the preceding chapters we have
been chiefly occupied with the reeog-
nitvm of Divine truth, but we now-
come to consider its reception in the
heart, that measure and degree of feith which is
less conviction than possession, being itself the
substance of things not as yet seen. This faith,
the soul's rich, unborrowed wealth, is not taken
on trust from other men's minds, nor even from
the words and promises of Scripture ; it is the
spirit's grasp upon these very words, the heart's
appropriation of these very promises, making
them indeed our own.

What Locke speaks of natural science holds
especially true in spiritual life, " that a man
■only has as much as he really knows and com-

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A PRESENT HEA VEN. 127

prehends. What he believes only and takes on
trust from the floating, of other men's opinions
(though these opinions may happen to be true)
is but borrowed wealth, wMch, like fairy money,
though it were gold in the hand from which he re-
ceived it, will be but leaves and dust when it
conies to use." Opinion holds truth in its hand,
experience holds to it by the heart, and to ex-
perience only is it given to work within the soul
that intimate persuasion of God's love which
i-aises it up to the victory which overcomes the
world. A living faith is a loving faith ; how
can it but believe in the love by which it lives?
It knows Him in Whom it has believed, and
needs no other strength aiid wisdom than such
a knowledge implies. It has ceased to con-
fer with flesh and blood. For the allurements
of sense, for the doubts of reason, for the as-
saults of spiritual wickedness, it has gained one

" I hara foond Him Whom mj soul loveth."

" To know the love of God as it is in Christ,
to trust in it, to resign one's self wholly to it,
this is believing." But is this degree of belief
easy ? is it even possible to man's unaided spirit ?
Who that knows his own heart, its darkness, iiii
bewilderments, its feebleness to good, will nut

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128 A PRESE?fT HEAVEN.

be ready to join in the vehement ]
the great Reformer, and exclaim,* " If any one
could indeed believe, then for very joy he would
be able neither to eat, nor drink, nor do aught
else." Who that compares his heart with the
picture of the renewed heart, as the pencil of the
Holy Spirit has ti'aced its clear, firm outline in
Scripture, will be inclined to cavil at conversion,
— to dispute as iff whether it is in most cases
sudden or gradual, initiative or complete, when
he fee!s that in all cases it is needed f The
Holy Spirit works upon what it finds, — the
history of conversion varies with that of each
individual soul • thus there are persons who
need no lepentance in the sense of a tunimg of
the outward hfe but in a deeper sense even
that of the renewing from on high aU need it.
Convernon is the consult of the »?ul to &od. It
is the acceptance ot Chnat and with Him, of
pardon, deliverance, freedom; it is the with-
drawal of the soul from its own objects to fix
them upon those with which the doctrine of
Christ presents it, and which the natural heart
does not, cannot receive. Conversion belongs
to the rationale of spiritual life ; it is a fact, at
which, even if it were not revealed, were not
insisted upon, in Scripture, the heart of man

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 129

would arrive through its own unanswerable logic.
Place these two side by side, man as lie is by
nature, and man as he is seen in Christ. Bid
these two approach, resemble each other ; nay
more, bid them unite, be joined to each other,
not in a mere outward bond, but in spiritual
afGnity, as like meets like. Compare the dis-
positions, the desires, the objects of the natural
heart with those attributed in Scripture to the
mind renewed after Christ's Hkeness. Is there
resemblance here, is there even analogy? If
these two, contrary the one to the other, are
indeed to be made one, is there not a miracle
needed, a mighty spiritual and mora! change,
such as man has of himself no power to eifect,
— and yet a power to invUe or to restrain, as
miracles were invited or restrained of old, — a.
change which Scripture sets before us under
many expressions, figurative it is true, yet de-
scriptive of that -which is itself as real as all
that is alone real, because alone eternal, as real
as man's misery, as God's mercy; as real as
that Word, the expression of God's unchange-
able purpose, which shall endure when Heaven
and Earth shall pass away :

" For as a, yesEnre shalt thon change them, and they ehall be
ohUDged:
" But thou art the same, and thj years shall not fail."

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130 A PIIESENT HEA VEN.

When the Apostles declare that, if any man
be in Christ, he is a new creature, when they
Bpeak to us of being dead or alive in Christ, of
putting on the man from Heaven, they testify
to a change, a passing out of one state into an-
other, a transition as actual as that which takes
place under what, in speaking of the things of
daily life, we should express by a change of sit-
uation, a change of feeling. And of this change
the Apostles themselves are, as it were, the
unconscious witnesses ; they know that they have
passed from death unto life, know it fiir more
fjilly than even they can express in words.
They know it, not only for themselves, but for
the weakest of their brethren "yet without
strength." The consciousness of " being in the
Lord," partakers in the fellowship of His suffer-
ings, in the power of His resurrection, bound
up with Him forever in the bundle of life, runs
like a thread of fire through all their writings.
Even while they are unfolding statements of
doctrine, or settling questions of morals, the hid-
den flame breaks forth, the secret consciousness
glows into open exultation, " Who shall separate
us from the love of Christ?" Through the
whole of some Epistles, — we may particularly
instance the Ephesians and Colossians, — there
is a perpetual rise and overflow of that deep and

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. ]31

sober joy, which, alike in natural and spiritual
things, wells but from one spring, the comcioua
poBsession of a good, ever present and all-satisfy-
ing to the heart. It is " in tlie Lord " that
they rejoice and endure, labor and take rest,
make war and triumph. Their very life, as
they express it, is hid in Christ ; nothing that
belonged to it, sin only excepted, is extinguished,
all is transferred, — atFections, interests, joys,
and sorrows, these had a sweetness, a glory of
their own, but it is now transfigured into a
higher likeness ; all these earthly have been
made to bear the image of the heavenly. Old
things are passed out of the soul's life.

And sadness as well as joy has its intuitions.
We — I speak of all faitliful and mourning
Christians — have been instructed through our
very need in what the Apostles learnt through
fulness ; poverty, distance, alienation, these stat^
have also their deep experiences, brin^g truth
home into the sonl. I believe in conversion
because oiir Lord has said, " Except ye be con-
verted, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven."
I would believe in it, if He had not said this,
because I know and feel within myself that I
canrtot enter it without such a change. There

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132 ^ PRESENT HEAVEN.

is mystery, but no marvel in the prophetic an-
nunciation, " Ye shall not all sleep, but ye shall
aU he changed." Who shall enter upon a new
Being without being fitted for it? Does the
butterfly soar without wings? — long fashioned
in secret, though they be long hidden. I claim
a new heart and a new spirit, because Grod has
promised them. I would claim tbem even if
they had not been promised by God, because
God has given me kws which I cannot keep,
but with other aids, other light, other strength
than that which Nature furnishes, — because he
has ^ven me promises exceeding great and pre-
cious, which without these I cannot enter upon,
cannot even desire. For how," saith the Al-
mighty, speaking to man at the mouth of His
prophet,

" Shall I place thee among so

Mvm by making us fit to enter wpon the Joy whidi
He haB prepared. " Thou, He says, shalt call
me My Father, and shalt not turn aside from
following me,"

The son's heart secures the son's portion, tlie
inheritance is entailed upon the love. All that
is won, all that is lost in spiritual life, is lost, is

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A PRMSENT HEAVEN. X33

won through the heart.* Here it is, in the will,
the intellect, the affections, in that which within
us is human, distinguishing man as man from
that which is simply animal and instinctive,
that Christ has received a kingdom from His
Father. When He comes into man's heart,
into that which inquires, which reasojis, which
loves, which suffers, Mb comes unto Ms mn,
unto that which He has made His own through
the closest ties of affinity, the deepest experien-
ces of anguish. " Behold, He himself took our
infirmities, and bare our sicknesses." He comes
unto that which He alone understands in all its
depths, its windings, its intricacies.

One man may understand another man, Christ
understands Humanity as a who.. ■ but how
shaU Humanity understand Him'r How shall
Man, even in his own limited measure, appre-
hend that for which he himself has been appre-
hended of Christ ? When the intellect would
lay hold on these overwhelming facts, — a fellen
world, a manifested, suffering, dying God, a spir-
itual Presence still living and working among
us, — when it would strive to make these facts

• Look diligently what ttou Invest, what aioo fearest, wherein
tliou r^oioBat or art eaddened, aud under tha rags of conversion
Ihou wilt find a heart perverted. The whole heart is in these
four affections, and of these I think we must understand that
sajing, Turn lothe Lord with all thy heart — St. Beemahb.

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134 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

intelligible to itself, would ondeavor to con-
nect 5iem with each other, they elude it , wi-
dening with its grasp, they escape from it on
every side. Hence is it that the strain, so to
epeak, of salvation, has not been laid by God
upon our acquiescence in any minutely devel-
oped theory, even of Truth itself, but upon
love for one living Person, upon belief in one
crowning act.

Hence is it that, as earthly interests recede,
and eternal verities press and advance upon the
soul, the Cross comes into the solemn foreground
of spiritual hfe, and that Prayer of Moses, the
Man of God, becomes so frequent on Christian
lips, $kow lJiy servants thy worh ! Not that our
saving interest in Christ depends upon the cleai>
ness of our spiritual vision, for it is with the
heart man believetb unto righteousness, and the
heart may be deeply influenced by the very
work with regard to which its views remdn
confiised and imperfect.* But the fuller creed
makes the richer life ; if a little feith has an
open door set before it which no man can shut,
an ample faith sets our feet in the " large pas-
tures " that lie beyond it. And as the grasp
of faith tightens, its hold widens. If Christ
could say, when one had but lightly touched

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A PRESENT hEAVEN. 135

the hem of His garment, " I perceive that vii^
tue is gone out of m.e," if every spiritual ap-
proach to Him be as the drawing forth of life .
and strength, flowing out from Him to us, how
is it when Faith has made its great, all-inclusive
seizure, when it has laid hold upon the Tree
whose every leaf is given for the healing of the
nations ? Fear not, ye who seek Jesus who was
crucified. Other seekers, other followers, may
after a while turn back and walk no more with
Him, but they who have gone to Him that they
may also die with Him, can never be offended
by word or deed of His,

It is the Cross that intensifies, that glorifies
hfe, that opens up depth after depth in the Hu-
man and in the Divine Natures, and bridges over
the depths it has disclosed. Here only, at the
foot of the Cross, can man really die, — here
only, with his loving, his suffering Lord, can he
lay down his hfe that he may receive it again in
Him. And while the precepts of Christ are
reformative, tlie death of Christ is regenerative ;
it has cast a seed into the bosom of humanity,
the germ of a new, ever progressive hfe, — a
seed over which Christ himself watches, and
whose expansion in the heart, the bursting of a
heavenly midnight-blooming flower, is conver-
sion. Faith in this great miracle makes all

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136 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

Other miracles possible. Slkow Tht
Thy work, and their own will be indeed eoBt/, for
" in the blood is the life." We go on asking,
What shall we do that we may inherit eternal'
life? until, through the sudden shining of a
light from heaven, or the gradual dawning of a
day-atar within our hearts, we learn that our
part is to live, to die, in the strength of that
which has been already done. "Let him lay
hold of my strength, that he may make peace
with me ; and lie shall make peace with me,"

And it is remarkable that, until through the
Spirit we feel Christ within us as one that is
alive from the dead, the fact of His death seems
to affect us but little. Though no sorrow was
ever like unto His sorrow, it is nothing to those
that pass by — a story often told — an accepted
history. Only to those who believe is Christ
precious, for they only know their Lord in the
fellowship of His sufferings, in the power of
His resurrection. They have looked upon Him
whom they beforetime pierced, and He has
looked upon them, — a mutual recognition has
been exchanged. When Joseph makes himself
known unto. his brethren, their hard hearts are
smitten.

And not until then, — for true self-renuncia-
tion, much as has been written and said about

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 137

it, is not easy. No sight, short of that great
one of Sacrifice and Love, can turn the heart
from its own works, the many works through,
which the natural man will naturally seek to
propitiate his Maker, to fix it upon the one work,
through which the spiritual man Is aware that
his very imperfection is accepted. For all men
seek and love their own ; the natural man
cleaves to his own works and efforts, as being part
of that body of self which no man ever yet
hated ; and for this natural adhesion there is no
escape save in rising to a state of being wherein
frail, self-seeking mortality is swallowed np in a
Divine life. Then being made partaker of a
life in which Christ is his own, it becomes nat-
ural, and, as it were, an instinct, to love and
cleave to Him. It is the soul's natural life.

The soul that has thus returned to its true
gravitation * has done alike with task-work and
with anxiety, has ceased from that sad complaint,
" Thou hast left me to serve alone." It is no
longer cumbered with much serving : no longer
solicitous about its woik, but about its life, the
life of Christ within it, of which that work is
but the blossoming and expansion So long as

• All things in nature are mo¥ed and bnraght to their proper
place by their gravity, the light upnardn the heavy downwards,
bal tJie grmiltatiori of ihe ralkaal in7 is lor'e, the first and proper
moava nhioh inclinas the will to its object. — John of Gech.

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138 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

it is planted beside that River of water, neither
flower nor fruit will ^1 in their season. " He
that abidetli in me and I m Him, the same
bringeth forth much fruit."

For though it be possible, as appears from St.
Paul's -warning, for an unholy heart to obtain
a perception of the salvation which Christ has
wTought, such a perception will be ever unac-
companied by any renewing, vivifying change
of aim and of affection. The holders of the
Truth in unrighteousness only hold it as a de-
tached thing ; it has no hold upon them, nor
root wherefrom to put forth its transformative
energy. Even in Christ's light they do not see
light, because they do not love it. Yet this
barren, lifeless faith is not to be opposed, as has
been sometimes attempted, by any doctrine of
Works, dead, save in so far as they flow out of
the fulness of the living Vine. This is to look for
fruit from the tree of self, withered from its very
root. From me, saith Christ, is thy fruit found.
For dead feith and dead works there remains a
common antidote, conversion, that hving faith
in a living Saviour which works within us a real
change, f " so that we, beholding his glory, are
changed from glory to glory, even ly the Spirit
of the Lord"

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 139

And it is evident that an inward change, a
change in ourselves, is needed before we even
can appreciate our Saviour's outward worli.
The dead hury thdr dead, the hving live unto
Him who liveth and was dead, and is alive for
evermore. I would illustrate what I mean by
saying that our Saviour's work, the work of
which He said upon the cross, "It is finished,"
is like a perfect globe, complete in itself as one
of the planets of our system, but we do not see
what it is until the Spirit moves from point to
point of the darkened disk, and all becomes lu-
minous. When He, saith our Lord, the Spirit
of Truth, is come. He shall take of mine, and
show it unto you. Is there not something very
remarkable in this saying and in the words that
follow it, — " He shall not speak of Himself, he
shall glorify Me " ? As the Son's work upon
earth was to manifest His Father unto the world,
as He spake not His own words nor followed
out His own will, even so is the Blessed Spn-it
occupied only with the words and will of Him
that sent Him. He speaks not of Himself, He
has, as it were, no new thing to impart, but
i-ather to make all things new, by setting the
things of Heaven before the sou! in that light
of Heaven by which alone they can be read
aright.

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140 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

'' There is a spirit in man," a principle of life
within us, wrapped like the fire within the flint,
in sleep and darkness, until the powerful attrac-
tion of God's hlessed Spirit, " that inspiration
of the Almighty which giveth understanding,"
comes to quicken it. For we must remember
that in spiritual things every increase of knowl-
edge, every expansion of love, partakes of the
nature of a manifestation. It is a discovery of
G-od unto the soul to wMeh it could never have
atUdned through its own efforts. Spiritual illu-
mination is the unseaUng of the soul's eye, en-
abling it to behold that which actually exists.

" The lightning's flash did not create
The lovely prospect it revealad,
li only ihoiced the real ttaU
Ofwhal the darhnest had concealed."

Also must we guard against an idea which is
apt to mix itself in our conceptions of God's'
dealings with man, — I mean that of looking
upon them, whether general or individual, as
being connected with some change in Him.*
Known unto God are all His works from the

• It is not God^ hut Man^ Uiat is chajiged by ouf Saviour's
death ; it is not necessarj for our reparation that a changa he
wrought upon Him, but upon na, seeing that it is not God, but
JIati, that has lost Hie goodness. Christ came into the world, not
to make God better, but to mats us better ; nor did he die to
make Him more disposed to do good, but ta dispose us to receive

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. m

foundation of the world. He loved the world
before He made known that love in its crowning
manifestation. What is the life and death of
Jesus Christ but the showing, what is the Gos-
pel but the telling, of this love? — a love from
the beginning yearning over its object, yet with-
drawing from it as Joseph did from his brethren,
— a love reveahng itself at long intervals, in
dark utterances, speaking to man through tho
cloud and the fiery pillar, yet now showmg us
plainly of the Father in the intelligible language
of a deed, — "Greater love than this hath no
man, that a man lay down Ins life foi his
friends."

So hath God loved the world, keeping bick
some better thing m store, resraving Love's
final proof, its blest Epiphany, until the fiilness
of His own time came in; e\en so He lo^es
the soul before, through " lovmg-kmdne'ss," He
so imparts tliat iove as to enable the aoul to
return it. For until we haie felt God to be
loving, we cannot acknowledge Him to be lo^ e.
St. John tells us explicitly, He that loveth not
kuoweth not God, The knowledge of God is
described to us in Scripture is no cold, intel-
lectual estimate of His perfections, but rather
that intimate delighting in them, that power-
fully felt attraction, which makes the very

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142 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

expressions of knowledge and love as applied
to man's communion with his Maker inteiv
changeable. We often say of earthly things,

" That we mnat Iots them ere we know
That they are worthy to be loTed."

We may confess of many tilings and of many
people that they are indeed lovely and desira-
ble, but what are ikey to us until the heart has
taught us at once our Owd need and their ex-
ceeding worth and value ?

And even thus, though after a manner un-
recognizable to human sense, we need to be
" drawn " to Grod. He whom no man hath
seen, nor can see at any time, can only become
the delight and desire of the soul, according to
the degree in which He is pleased to reveal
unto it His beauty, and Impart unto it the sense
of His satisfying goodness. We can only love
God according to the measure in which we
know and are known of Him. But is this
measure a fixed one ?

Surely, far otherwise ; yet it is no uncommon
thing to hear well-disposed people lament their
own conscious deadness and deficiency, in terms
which imply that they look upon this holy
affection rather in the light of a natural faculty,
which one person may be so happy as to possess
and another be innocently devoid of, than as a

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 143

state of bdng to be attained to through the im-
provement of a siipernatural gift. Yet if fixed
principles of attraction and repulsion are as
unceasingly . at work within God's spiritual
kingdom as within His natural world,* — if
there is a correspondency between the mani-
festation of God's love and our " continuing "
in what has been already imparted, it is evident
that all who truly wish to love God better may
do so. Our Saviour, that great master of
Love's secrets, that Divine expounder of its
Sentences, has not placed its essence, its ex-
pression, in things to which man's feeble, op-
pressed nature is not at all times eq^ual; in
tears, in aspirations, in passionate outpourings
of the spirit ; He has not sent us to the heaven
of fervent rapture when we would bring Him
down from above, neither to the Deep of an-
guish and tribulation when we would raise Him
once more from the dead in our cold, (

■ An ajiaJogy for what is here intended may be found itt tha
cansss which prerent vegetation in tlie desert. [ See Humboldt's
Aspesti of Nature.) Vast sandy plains are dry bccanse little raiu
falls npon them, avd Utile rain faUi upoa them becauie th^ are la
dry, oolunuiB of heated air rushing np to disperaa the vapors that
would otherwise descend. Because there is no moisture beneath,
there is no rain from above. Often, doubtless, ifoiild God send
a gracious raia upon His inheritance and refresh it when It ia
weary, were not the olonds ready to break in fatness stayed bj
aridity below.

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144 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

hearts. But He has bid us keep within the
way, the way witliin which " no wajfering
man " of humble and sincere heart " ever yet
erred," grievously as his course might he beset
and hindered. He has said, "^ t/e love me, ye
will keep my commandments." We are surely
too much in the habit of looking upon tliis espe-
cial ^ft of God's Spirit, " this unction from the
Holy One, ikrough wkieli we understand all
things," as a mere affair of temperament, con-
founding it with that, in which, as in a soil
more or less favorable, it takes root, — the
degree of religious receptivity, which varies so
much in different individuals, even in different
races of men. Yet spiritualized conceptions,
fervid feelings, all which we include within the
depth and range of susceptibility to devout im-
pressions, are hut the element through which
the flame diffuses itself; did it consist in these,
it would be a phosphorescence, lacking the hid-
den principle of heat which makes it indeed " a
fire," substantive and real as the object upon
which it feeds.

" To him that hath shall be given, and he
shall have more abundantly." We have here a
sure word of promise ; a prophecy fuliilling
itself in the Christian life so constantly, so qui-
etly, that its accomplishment cometh not with

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 145

observation. Since our Lord, in taking our na-
ture upon Himself, drew it back with Him into
tlie bosom of His Father's love, there has arisen
a bond between our common Humanity and
God, even the bands of love, the cords of a
man, which we as individuals may tighten or
relax. You speak, in one of your letters, " of
a self-regulation upon God's Law, which, in its
co-operation with tlie purifyirig grace of His
Spirit, is as the cleansing of the dust from the
soul's windows, letting the sun's rays stream in
and penetrate its rem.otest corners, — or like
the deepening of the channel of a river by
clearing away its stones and rand, which is fol-
lowed by a fuller rush of waters."* St. Peter
speaks plainly of the Holy Spirit as that which
God hath ^ven to those who obey Him,f and
how many are the Scriptures which make us
aware that there are, on our 'part, endeavors
of which the Lord is mindfiil, attitudes to which
He is ever fiivorable, mental characteristics, in
themselves so pleasing to Him that He has said
of the place where they are found, " Here will
I dwell, for I have a delight therein."

And hence there arises within the renewed

• To this point tends the Prophet's admonition, " Sow in right-
t AqUv. 32.

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146 ^ PItESENT HEAVEN.

Boal a secret, continual thirst, at once aftor holi-
ness and after grace. " Let thy garments be
always white, neither let thy head lack oint^
ment." It covets earnestly these hest gifts,
these holy dispositions, both as marks of the
Divine fevor and improvable pledges of its
countenance. For these jewels have an in-
herent magnetism, attracting even while they
adorn; each fits the soul for that which it
draws down upon it, a fiirther communication
of Divine Favor. lo the Beatitudes we see
this correspondency drawn out in strongly
marked antithesis, bot all Scripture witnesses
to it, making us aware of a sure connection be-
tween Faith and the putting forth of Almighty-
power ; between purity and the seeing of God ;
meekness and the indwelling of His Spirit ;
between the denying for conscience' sake of
earthly desires, and the implanting of heavenly
affections ; between the dedication of the heart
to God, and the enlightenment of the mind by
Him.

And blessed is he .who in any one of these,
even in that which is least, has been found faith-
ful to that which he has received of God \ For
as with the gifts, so it is with the Giver who is
to be desired above them all. In the soul that
would receive Him there must be a preparedness,

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 147

— an unwroTight conformity to which the
Psalmist confesses in inquiring, " When wilt
thou come unto me ? I will walk in my house
with a perfect heart." My times, he would
say, are in Thy Hand ; I must wait for a season
of refreshing, yet he waits in an outward
obedience of which the life-pulse is an inner
consciousness that the Lord is good to tiiem
that wait for Him, to the'soul that diligently
seeketh Him.

" We wait, O Lord, for thy loving-kindness
in the midst of thy temple." There is so much
in the Gospel that peculiarly addresses itself to
transgressors, that we are apt, in the attractive
tenderness of its appeals to such as are ignorant
and " out of the way," to Jose sight of the feet
that through its blessed revelations h'ght has
sprung up for the righteous, and joyful gladness
for them that are true of heart. Thou meetest,
saith the Prophet, him that rejoiceth and
worheth righteousness, those that remember TJiee
in thdr ways. And it is surely remarkable
that the earliest manifestations of the conso-
lation for which Israel waited were vouchsafed
to " Israelites indeed." The first di-oppings of
tlie shower of freenesses fell not upon the dwell-
ers in the wilderness, but upon a field which
the Lord had already blessed, upon just and

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148 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

devout persons walking in tlie ordinances of the
Lord blameless, living up to the light which
they then enjoyed. Such were Mary and
Joseph, Zacharias and Elisabeth, Simon and
Anna the Prophetess ; such too in the Gentile
■world was he to whom the words whereby that
world should be saved were first declared. The
prayers and alms of the good Cornelius • had
already come up as a memorial before God, and

« In how many of these righteous persons was that qnestion of
the Prophet's answered, " Do not By, Bxmft do good to him that
wftlfceth uprightly ? " Among thesB humble Bskera and seekers,
Bowing qnieWy along in the channel WherB they were to be over-
taken by the waters of grace, the Ennuoh of Queen Candaca
seems an affeotmg instance j and how much may we learn of
God's attitude towards such righteous waiting aoula, from the
few words which tlie Spirit spake unto PhUip, " Go and join thy-
self to that chariot." Go and join thyself! There sat that hon-
est. God-fearing, bnt still ignorant man, reading Eaalas. The
whole account is ftiH of a heavenly poetry, — how he diligently
read the passage, " He was led as a lamb to the slaughter " ; and
then his qnestion, showing such total darkness on the subject,
" Of whom spake the Prophet this ; of himself, or of sorob other
man? " — a simple, honest question, (o mAiA GodaerU the answer,
and with it, His eternal salvation. Who knows how long the
Ethiopian may have served the true God; he had come a long
way to visit the Temple, the place where He dwelt.

Have yon ever seen your servants sitting down on a Sunday
afternoon to read " a lesson," perhaps from a religions book which
thsy do not nnderstand, in perfect good faith that tbe lesson does
them good? I feel a yearning over sneh, — a desire that they
should possess the unknown good they Ignorantly hope for, — as
St. Paul declared to the Athenians the unknown God whom tliey
ignorantly worshipped. — J. E.B.

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A PRESENT heaven: 149

in the joy of those glad tidings which reached
him, that nnto the Gentiles also was granted
repentance unto life, was mixed a peculiar per-
sonal encouragement, like that which was of old
extended to one greatly beloved, " Fear not,"
said the angel commissioned to impart so many
wonders unto Daniel, " for from the first day
that thou didst set thy heart to understand and
to chasten thyself before thy God, thy words
were heard, and lam come for fhy words."

And even now, though it be no longer sent
to us by the hand of saint or angel, the keeping
of the commandment hath great reward. Many
anxious and honest Christians may be yet con-
sciously far from the spiritual haven where they
■would be. Let such be consoled in remember-
ing that the Father who draws us unto Christ
beholds us, yea, sets forth to meet us " while
we are yet a great way off." A great way off,
and- yet upon ths way, — herein hes all the
difference between resistance and returning, be-
tween the temper to which God inclines and
that against which He fights with the sword of
His mouth. We may be far as yet from the
robe and ring, from the kiss of perfect recon^
ciliation, still ferther from the hearing of that
Baying, " Son, thou art ever with me, and all that
Ihave w thine" yet we may be in the way that

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150 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

kadefh to a kingdom. Of this, we can have
no more affecting instance than the case of the
Disciples. How much they loved their Lord,
how little they understood Him I They seem,
like the multitudes who marvelled at the gra-
cious words that came out of His mouth, to have
felt an attraction towards His teaching, without
pei-ceiving its true import ; for how little while
their Lord was with tliem do they appear to
Jiave caught of His Spirit, or to have? become
' aware of the nature of His appointed workl
This is shown in so many parts of the, sacred
story, that it would be but tedious to multiply
instances to prove that it was upon a kingdom
of this world, and the power and glory belong-
ing to such, that their desires were set, their
requests founded, — desires yet to be ftilfllled,
requests yet to be granted &r more tiilly than
they were then capable of realizing. " Ye shall
indeed drink of Tny cup'^ Their faith, though
imperfect lq its scope, was sincere in its nature,
and it did not lose its reward. They trusted
that it was He who should redeem Israel, and
having an eye to Him, they were lightened,
and their feces were not ashamed.

And BO will it be with ns. They who, con-
tinuing faithful to Divine Grace, however par-
tially communicated, serve God with their whole

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A PRESENT HEAVEN. 151

lives, will never fail of tliat one reward, the
greatest which even He has to bestow, the be-
ing made able to love Him with their whole
hearts. If we follow our Lord's footsteps hum-
bly and patiently along the common road, He
will take us, as He did the three favored
Disciples, with Him upon the Mount, and show
us Moses and Elias, the hard sayings of the
law, the deep enigmatical oracles of life, ti-ans-
figured in Himself. Our eyes will be no more
holden, and the exclamation of our souls will
be, " Hast Thou been so long time with me.
Lord, and I have not known Thee ? "

Do you remember Eunyan's quaint and beau-
tiful description of the Land of Beulah, a coun-
try situated on this side of the Eiver of Death,
where the sun shineth night and day, and where
Pilgrims may rest and rejoice safely, their King
having brought them to His Banqueting House,
where His banner over them is love ? The
heart, as it advances in Christ, seems to reach
out towards this inward Millennium, this Messi-
anic reign of rest and fulness, the kiss of right-
eousness and peace within the soul. It wearies
of that order of things in. which there is a con-
tinual effort, — a struggle, a Law in the mem-
bers warring against the Law of God, and
desires to escape from it into the freedom* to

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152 A PRESENT HEA YEN.

which Christ has called us, the state in which
thia law is no more coercive, having become the
law fff thege very members, the pindple !»/ which
thm/ naturcdly act. A state whose chai-acteristic
is not Law, hut the liberty which exists under
such a law as that, which " being perfect " is
endued with power to " convert " the soul.

And if we pass but slowly into this liberty,
if, as you say, some of those who we may hope
arrive at the Holy City in safety seem to miss
the Land of Beulah on their way, — to know
much of the conflicts and struggles incident to
our Christian calling, little of its rest and sat-
isfection, — this need scarcely be wondered at,
"for there are many adversaries." The prin-
ciple of Life within us has much to contend
with from inward and outward hinderance, —
the imperishable seed lives in many a spiritual
conception, many a heavenly disposition that is
not yet strong enough to detach itself from
earthly obstructions, so that, lifted into a re-
gion where it feels the sunshine of love upMi
its leaves, it bursts into fiower and fragrance.
Yet, while we were yet without strength, Christ
died for the ■ ungodly. Decay, infirmity, cir-
cumstance, all that under which we do and
must groan, being burdened, — what matter if
these overcome us, so that we overcome them
through Him who loveth us. " A troop shall

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A PRESENT SEA VEN. 153

overcome Him," it was spoken of Gad, " but
He shall overcome at the last." Much bloom,
much sweetness, much usefukesB, may be tramr
pled out of our hearts and lives, without any
moral cession, — tfm alone can separate us from
the love of Christ ; comforted or uncomforted,
so long as our hearts, our wills, are steadfeat, we
can still be His sad, true lovers. The blossom
of early hope falls off, the fruit of performance
does not ripen perfectly ; it is the green initial,
the will, that which we would fain be, which
Christ looks for, and, coming, desires to find.

Of many a rooted and grounded soul the
bloom-time lies possibly beyond the grave. Yet
the Believer must be ever solicitous of victory ; *
— ever desirous to win, t to hold his ground in
a humble way, to let the enemy gain no advan-
tage. We should love, we should ardently
aspire to, the lowly, sorrowfiil triumphs of
Christ, the calm persistence in known duties,

* " It waa spiritual death which Christ conquered, so that at
UiB last it shaU be swaUowea up, - mark the word, — not in lifs,
but in victory. As the dead body sliall be raised to life, so also
shall tlie defeated sonl to victory, if only it has been fighting on
its Master's side, hai made no cixeaant with death, nor itself bowed
its forehead to its seal. Blind from the priBOu-house, maimed
from the battle, or mad fkim the tombs, their sonls shall snrely
yet sit astonished at His feet who giyeth peace." — Rubkih.

t Often, says He Maistre, in a real battle, the losses on either
fiide ae«m equal. Who does win' He tcho !ceais posseasioa of lh«

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.164 A PRESENT HEAVEN.

the readiness to begin all over again, — to see
the cherished plan, even the clierished prayer,
defeated. Death, the death of hope, of endeav-
or, will yet be swallowed up in victory ; —

" Thy dead men shall live,
Wilh my dead body sliall they arise."

Christ's final Triumph is secure, and with Him
the triumph of all that has been indeed His.
When St. Paul predicts that Christ shall reign
until He have subdued all things under His feet,
He adds emphatically, " Now the last enemy
that shall be destroyed is J)eath.^' It is impos-
sible that these words should be spoken of nat-
ural dissolution only. They refer to the whole
of that dark empire of which the death of the
body is but a part, and of this as a whole Christ
is the conqueror. Benoid, let us therefore go
to Him that we may also die with Him ; let us
die with Him, that we may also live with Him ;
let us suffer with Him, that we 'may also reign
with Him ; let us not in word, in thought, in life,
deny Him who abideth faithful, who cannot deny
Himself.

" And He was clothed in a vesture dipped in bl
"And the armies which were in Heaven fi
dolhed in fine linen, white and elean."

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Notes.

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Notes.

Note a. — Page 13.

if AY we not say that the Gospel — the
mplest sense of a word being always its
\ truest one — is considered and preached
I too little in its primary meaning, " glad
tidmgt"' The characteristic office of" an evangelist,
as distinguished from that of a teacher, is that of a
herald or proclaimer. He is one who hringeth good
tidings. In classical language {see Olshauaen, Vol. L
p. 3) the word Eocmgelmm was also used to signify
a reward or present given to a person bringing a
piece of good news, making him a sharer in the
gladness he imparted. Thus, while the Gospel, Uke
Him of whom it testifies, places its work before it, it
also brings its reward with it {Isa. xL 10, and Ixii.
11), being its own and exceeding great reward. The
Gospel is a gift, — one of those which our Lord,
having ascended up on high, received for us men, — ■
an acquisition, a blessing making rich, a thing to be

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158 NOTES.

rejoiced over, — good news, in short, and to be wel-
comed as such, and not good advice only. See on this
subject a beautiful tract, " The Ship of Heaven."

Note B. — Page 16.

WE may apply to Faitli what St. Augustine
says of its companion; — "Is love made
perfect the moment it is born ? so far from it, it is
born in oi-der that it may be brought lo perfection.
When it haa been bom, it is nourished ; when it has
been nourished, it is strengthened ; when it baa been
Btrenglhened, it is made perfect. When it has ar-
rived at perfection, it says, ' I desire fo depart and to
be with Christ.' "

Note C. — Page 35.

" IVyOW, without Faith we cannot be saved, for
iAI we cannot rightly serve God unless we !ovq
Hun, and we cannot love Him unless we know Him,
neither can we know God unless by Faith. There-
fore, salvation by Faith is only, in other words, ilie
hve of God by the hnowledgf, of God, or the recovery
of the image of God by a true spiritual acquaintance
with Him.

" Would you then be freed from the I

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NOTES. 159

corruption? would jou grow in grace, in graoe in
general, or in any grace in particular ? If you would,
your way b plain. Ask from God more faith; beg
.of Him, morning, noon, and nighl, while you walk
by Che way, while you sit in the house, when you lie
down, and when you rise up, — beg of Him simply
to impress Divine things more deeply on your heart,
— to give you more and more of the substance of

things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."

John Wksley.

Note D. — Page 43.

AN idea, according to the vigor with which it is
conceived or realized, will quickly or slowly
prepare for itself a body, and pass into a fact. When
once it has established its empire withm the mind, it
will not be long in bringing outward things under its
jurisdiction.

" J'entenda, par la foi, cette confiance dans la vSrit4
jwt fait que non seidemenl on la timt pour vrai, et
que I'intelligence en est satisfaite ; mats qu'on a con-
ftance dans son droit de r^gner sur le monde, de
gouverner les faits, et dans sa puissance pour y
r^ussir.

" Cest dans ce sentiment qu'une fois entri en pos-
session de la verili, I'homme se sent appeK k ia feire
passer dans les faits ext^rieurs, h, les reformer, k les
r^ler seloa la raison." — Guizot.

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Note K — Pages 51, 57.

« "O ELIGION stands upon two piUars, namely

Jtv what Christ did for ua in His tiesh, and what

He performs in us by His Spirit, Moat errors arise

fix)m an attempt to separate these two." — Newton.

Note F. — Page 67.

WE may learn something by considering the
sense in wliich the Apostles use the word
S^nt; as when St. Paul addressed a who^ Church,
"Even all that be at Rome," as haring received
grace and apostleship, called to he Saints ; and thus
opens another epistle, " To the Church of God which
is at Corinth, called to be Saints, with all who in
every place call upon the-Lord Jesus, both theirs and
ours." The word as they employ it confers no pecu-
liar distinction ; it is not, as it has become with us, a
Title of Honor, but the badge of simple citizenship in
Christ, being applied to all who remain f«thful to the
spiritual relations in which they have been placed by
Him.

It is a Family Name, not acquired, but inherited,
and as such testifies, not to eminence of personal
grace, or loftiness of individual achievement, but to
union with the Holiness of which they who hear it
have been made partakers. To be a Saint, in the

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JVOTES. iQi

sense i wh h 1 y t] 1 l be, rot such

a one a m Ch t m d w men raised

up by Go 1 f p al l h b but such a
one as all CI m a a 1 ^ m my be. To be

a Saint mply t h a m n n Ch st; h is the
growin p ( Hmwh H d all things,

it ia th f d p 1 B d wh 1 ame down

from Hanh hf 1 whhe open, and
through duties which are common to all.

When we restrict the idea of Saiatahip to those
eminent spirits, the burning and shining lights in
which we are permitted from time to time to rejoice,
we betray that our notion of sanctity is placed rather
in things accidental to the renewed character, than in
that which is its essence. Zeal, fervor, learning,
and eloquence devoted to the holiest purposes; die
power of subjecting men's spirits, or of calling down
upon them the refreshing from above, — these Ihings
do not mah the Saint, they only adorn him. These
are but the gifts laid upon the altar. "It is the
altar which sanctifies the gift," and of that altar all
are partakers.

To recognize the privileges of our high yet com-
mon calling ia to understand Uiat a man is not a
Saint in virtue of anything which separates him from
his Brethren, — which throws him as it were into
reUef from the general household of faith, — but
through that which unites him to them ail. And
when I think of this, I feel that our present need is
not BO much of tlie signs of an Apostle, wrought

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162 NOTES.

among tia in signs and wonders, in miglity and merci-
ful deeds, as of a more general partaking in tbog«
covenanted blessings, given under the usual economy
of grace, to every man to profit withal. We may be
able to number few men of mark and feature, we
have among us but " few names." Yet need we go
round our Zion, counting up her towers and telling
over her spiritual bulwarks ? It is enough for us,
looking to her sure foundation, to be able to say that
''This man was bom in her " ; sufficient to know that
the Highest doth even now inhabit her. The times
and the seasons are in God's hands ; for aught we
know, it may not fall within his plan that individual
gifts should be as conspicuous as in earher ages ; dif-
fusion of light may in some degree interfere witli its
concentration, and will at any rate cause it to c^ear
less splendid. There are peculiar manifestations, even
as the Apostle tells us, but one Lord; diversities of
gifts, worthy of being coveted earnestly, yet one in-
clusive of them all, the living membership in Christ,
in which his people, whatever fiiey may keep or lose,
have still all things in comm.on.

ST. PAUL speaks of being able to comfort such
of his converts as were in trouble, with the com-
fort wherewith he himself was comforted of God

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NOTES. 163

W?io can impart anything that he has not first re-
ceived^ And where are the souls tliat have such
especial need of being established in the everlasting
consolations of God, as those " sons of consolation,"
the Levites of the better covenant, who are con-
tinually called upon to administer it to others ? As
Ihe Apostles spoke of themselves as "witnesses,"
chosen before of God, to declare among the people
the things which they had heard and seen, so should
their successors, called with'a Uke holy calling unto
a like holy office and ministry, he able to speak of
the things concerning the kingdom of God, as of that
which they do know, and to testify of them as of that
which they have seen. The spiritual husbandman,
laboring in his Lord's vineyard, must be first a par-
taker of its fruits (2 Tim. ii. 6), and should be able
to speak of the good country where they grow as of a
land with which he is familiar. The Gospel of salva-
tion should not fall from his lips like an historic nar-
rative, — it is not a hook which he is reading, hut a
story which he is relating out of the intimacy of per-
sonal experience. " We are his witnesses in these
things." " come hither," says the Psalmist, "and
I will tdl you what God hath done for my soul." —
See on this subject two tracts published at Leeds,
1854 ; " Authorities for the Certainty of Grace," by
the Eev. R. Collins ; and " Renewal or Conversion,"
by the Kev. R, AilMn.

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Note H. — Page 102.

" ^ |"^HE Spirit of God yet causes men to hope
X that a world will come ; the better one,
they call it, perhaps they might more wisely call
it the real one. Aho I hear them speak contintMUy
of going to it, rather than of its coming to them,
which again ia strange ; for in that prayer which
they had straight from ^the lips of the Life of the
world, there is not anything about going to another
world, — only something of anotlier world coming
into this, or rather not another, but the only govern-
ment, that government which will constitute a World
indeed, new heavens and a new earth. Earth no
more without form and void, bu( sown with fruits of
righteousness ; Finnament no more of passing cloud,
but of cloud risen out of the crystal sea ; cloud in
which, as He was once received up, so He shall again
come with power." — Ruskin.

Note L — Page 128.

ST. PAUL saith, " The spirit will ^ve itself up
to God, and trust in Him and obey, hut reason,
ilcsh and blood, will resist, and cannot upward rise."
Therefore must our Lord God bear wilh us. One
person asked, " Wherefore doth not God impart fuU
knowledge ? " Dr. Martin replied, " If any one

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could indeed Ijelieve, then for very joy lie would be
alile ceither fo eat nor drink, nor do aught else." —
Life of Luther.

Note K. — Page 184.

WE must not insist upon any routine in re-
ligious experience, as the spiritual disci-
pline to which believers are subjected varies with the
probation of outward life. To the sinful and ignorant
the awakening to God Is as (he coming in of light,
making them to see their ways and to loathe them-
selves for their doings which were Dot good ; to
others, already in the way, it is the diicovery of
love, Thoa meetest him tl At worketh righteousness,
those that rememher thee in thy ways

The work of the Holy Spmt mcludes both teach'
ing and training; it has not only to enlighten the
intellect to apprehend Divine truth but il o to guide
the heart into its ways. Sime bel ever* seem from
the first taught of God to look to the work of Chnsts
a deep conviction of sintulne«a a sense of impending
danger, draw them to Him as to a Saviour. Having
been filled with their own ways, and having tasted of
the bitterness they led to, they experience deep sor-
row, and with it that peculiar joy of the pardoned
soul, unlike, as you say, to any other, in its union of
deep sorrow with grateful love and joy. To such
spirits the work of their Lord is precious, they

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166 NOTES.

feel their need of it at every step, yet they have
still a training, sometime'! a very severe one, to go
through, — a will to be subdued, affections to be
purified. To others, the discipline comes first, they
are drawn to our Lord through a yearning after
moral perfection, which leads them to seek the ex-
cellency which shines nowhere so brightly ai in Him.
They seek Him in ordinances, through duties. He is
for them, perhaps for a long time, a Prince rather
tlian a Saviour, yet all the while the Will of God is
instructing them in the doctrine. Though at this
stage they are little able to bo the guides and com-
forters of others, their own feet stand firm, and when
a clearer light dawaa, it finds them upon the path on
which, like early travellers, they have aet forth be-
fore the breaking of the day, — the path on which no
true wayfarer, though he might walk on it long in
darkness, ever yet erred. We may compare (he
hearts of tliese just persons to a fair, well-ordpred
room, with the fire on the hearth laid ready for kin-
dling. We are conscious of a chillnesa in the at-
mosphere, for the Master has not yet come, but all is
prepared for Him, and for the touch of the living
coal that will light up all into a steadfast glow.

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KoTE L. — Page 138.

AEEAL though not as yet a complete cliange ;
one which may be illustrated through that
which in the Persian fable passes over the clay
which (he rose has permeated. It has gained a real
sweetness, though independent of its fragrant com-
panion it would ie, what in a certain sense it even
now renuiins, "a miserable piece of clay."

" Christ," says Baxter, " is not such a physician
as to perform but a supposed or reputatiye cure.
He came not lo persuade His leather to judge us to he
well because Me himself is well, or to leave us nnoured,
persuading God that we are cured. Never did the
blessed Son of Glod intend in His dying or merits to
change the^Holy Nature of His Father, and to cause
Him to love that which is unlovely, or to reconcile
Him to that which, as He is God, He abhorreth. We
must bear His image, and be holy as He is holy, be-
fore He can approve us or love us with complacency.
This is the work of our Blessed Eedeemer, to make
man fit for God's approbation and dehght. He re-
geoerateth us that He may sanctify us and fit us for
our Master's use."

Children talk of repeating things by heart. Is
there not such a thing as tiving bt/ heart? " Ye shall
know the truth," saith Christ, "and the truth shall
make you free." Obedience, long persevered in, will
grow less and less conscious, and Christ will become,

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in a simple and literal ■-ense, the life of them that 1)p-
lieve. This state 13 so far assimilated to that of
Heaven, that its guiding principle is in a less degree
faith than love, a eonfidenee less founded upon that
which is still unseen, than buik up upon that which is
haown and loved. A state, in which the soul's con-
verse is not framed liie a speech acquired by rules
and study, but is idiomatic, the natural expression of
natural feelinga. Tat even this has been acquired.
As in the fine arts, we must work by rule until we
are able to work without it. May not a liabit of the
soul be formed, as well as a habit of the eye or hand,
when the outward rule has passed into an inward
law, working out in that soul an obedience " so uni-
versal, so subtle, and so glorious, that nothing hut tlie
heart can keep it." * The true artist ia not thinking
(consciously) of his rules, yet keeps th^ all. Is
there not a state corresponding to this in spiritual
life, one in which wisdom reveals herself to such of
her true lovers as have sought her from " the flower
to the ■'rape'"' — when Jer "lorious classio" first
1 amt, a a hool a a h d and di f 1 1

di d fa hf lly b t a. a task — f p hap
w pt — k n uj n t by tra nl but

w 11 ly th d if ult pla d tl bat

ap] dasab mbok gd mp

and familiar fnend.'

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Note M.— Page 151.

SPIRITUAL freedom is not founded upon law-
lessness, but upon obedience, as St. Bernard
says, to a better will tban our own ; it is not freedom
from law, but freedom from that witbin ourselves
which makes it felt as a constraint, — the rejoicing
freedom which loves the authority it lives under.
There seems much profit in considering the nature
of true spiritual recreation, little in endeavoring to
trace out its attainable degree. Some pious thinkers
have fixed this at a limit which, although it may not
want the support of an isolated passage of Scripture,
is opposed to its general tenor, and also contradictory
to a deep-seated in'stinet which assures us that per-
fection, if here attainable, would involve a latent
imperfection from which the soul shrinks. Under
our present conditions of being, we feel that we need
that sense of dependence upon God which a con-
sciousness of frailty inapirei ; where without this
would be the adoring humility, the tender, implicit
reliance upon a better righteousness than our own ?
The perfection of which our nature is capable is not
that of a stale complete in itself, wrought out and
established within the soul at once and forever.
The very hfe of the renewed soul is relative ; its
beauty and strength derived.

" Thou sowpsi not J et that thing which shall be, but
bare grain," a seed with which the Divine Husband-

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